Stephan Pastis Quotes

I'm not a person who would get up at 5 A.M. to write, but I could sacrifice my Friday night and just order in dinner, sit at home and get into it.

Most Sundays, with the exception of football Sundays, I work, because I don't take days off as long as I'm working on something that's supposed to be all in the same mood.

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 start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to start in the early afternoon and work until about 3, go do errands, have dinner, and then write for a few more hours in the evening.

You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death.

Every morning, I go off to a small studio behind my house to write. I try to ignore all email and phone calls until lunchtime. Then I launch into the sometimes frantic busy-ness of a tightly scheduled day.

I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.

I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter or watch a movie with my husband or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job.

It's a crazy busy schedule, but I still have two hours a day for school because it's a priority.

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

When I was younger, I just put off the writing until later in the day, but now I write early every morning to get it done. I can only write for a few hours at a time; after that, my attention fades.

I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise.

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

Over the last four years, I've made a habit of coming into my office in the morning and just getting to work.

I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf.

I have always made sure that I put my game ahead of anything else, sometimes even before friends and family.

I am a total workaholic. If I don't shoot for two days, I get uncomfortable at home. I won't comment on my personal life. That is totally out of bounds. When I do get married, everyone will know.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

I think I'm very focused and am quite a good multitasker, and I'm quite driven in knowing what my responsibilities are to my family and knowing what I've got to do to do that.

I just get things done instead of talking about getting them done. I don't go out and party. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs and I'm not married, that leaves a lot of time for my work.

I would rise, monk-like, at 6 A.M., speak to no one, make tea, and go immediately to my desk from which I didn't move until frills appeared around the edges of my eyes or I heard the sound of a wine bottle being uncorked. It would give the wrong impression to describe these as Writing Days.

I'll stay in the studio for 12 hours at a time, just producing music and making records. It doesn't feel like 'Oh man I've got a job to do.' It's more like 'Oh man I didn't even realize I've been there this long.'

You've got to have dedication because there's a lot of sacrifice which goes into it - a lot of your time is minimal with friends and family, especially in the past 10 years.