Salman Rushdie Quotes

Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

I've hung around in absolute exhaustion and starvation waiting for an idea to hit, which might have been months. I've talked things over with editors, found out what they wanted, and when they wanted it delivered.

If I was going to write something, I'd need to stop for three months and just see if I had any thoughts in there.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.

It feels presumptuous to think of writing for adults.

I can't write every day. I have to skip a day in between. If I try to do it every day, nothing comes.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.

My energies get used up quite quickly, and the psychic space I'm in when I write is a very lonely one, so I found that harder and harder to get back to.

Sixteen years as a freelance features journalist taught me that neither the absence of 'the Muse' nor the presence of 'the block' should be allowed to hinder the orderly progress of a book.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.

I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.

I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.

It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.

Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it.

Sometimes in writing you have difficult periods and then other times it just flows.

In the afternoon, it's impossible to put down any new words. I don't even try.