Harry Crews Quotes

It's amazing what I could've written in my life if I had realized that I should keep writing and not masturbating.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography.

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.

I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.

I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.'

You have to fight against all the things that will keep you out of writing, because life doesn't go with writing. You will always have something more important to do: you will have to take your children to school, you will have to cook something, you have to meet friends. But you have to fight if you want to write.

Either I need an assignment with a strict deadline - like something for a movie or a TV show or whatever - or else I need to create a made-up deadline for myself for my own records. Otherwise, I don't write anything.

It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

For writing, getting off our buts means getting on our butts-putting it into a chair and not moving from the chair for a set period of time.

I think I've only spent about ten percent of my energies on writing. The other ninety percent went to keeping my head above water.

The biggest pitfall to avoid is not writing. Not writing is really, really easy to do, especially if you're a young writer. The hope that elves will come in the night and finish it for you, is a very common one to have. That is my main recommendation - you have to write, and you have to finish what you write and beyond that, it's all detail.

A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

I'd just love to sit at home, wake up at 10AM, go to my own office with my dog, and write a movie. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that though. I think I'll just end up playing Minecraft and self-destructing.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Not managing your time and making excuses are two bad habits. Don't put them both together by claiming you 'don't have the time'.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.

The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?

Outside of interviews, I spend very little time thinking about myself. I spend time thinking about my writing and my children and other things that are pertinent.

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book.