Georges Simenon Quotes

I write very slowly.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

I used to joke about this but I've recently realized that I really believe it: I spent many years training myself to write very slowly for pretty good money. So the idea of writing really quickly for free offends me.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can.

I write fast. I'm one of the lucky ones.

Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

I've never been a fast writer.

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I'm not the fastest writer. I can't just crank out ideas that are good enough.

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.

I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.

With a series, keeping the quality high and writing incredibly fast, that's the first lesson you learn. You can't be real precious. When you're doing a feature film, you have 2 1/2 months; you sort of take your time. It's a different animal.

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.

As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough – I wrote faster than I would write a letter – two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.

I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

So the real drama for me is balancing live performances and writing, and one of the ways I balance it is I write in hotel rooms. That's not exactly balancing. Actually, writing in hotel rooms means that I'm refusing to deal with the problem.

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.

I'd much prefer to write more quickly.

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

Any kind of writing that's meaningful becomes hard work, so there were times when it would really flow, there were times when I'd get 10 pages a day, and then there were days when I would do three pages. Depends on the thickness of the material. If it's satisfying, it's hard, but it's pretty wonderful.

But what I realized when I was looking back at them was that no matter how different they are, they're still coming from me, and they're still coming from my brain and my set of obsessions. I think that no matter how different I tried to make them, there were just these certain questions that I just kept circling back to as I was writing. I think they were the ones I was really swept up in in that decade.

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.