Simon Sinek Quotes

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.

I would work until I got stuck, and I would put it down and pick up something else. I might be able to take a 20-minute nap and get to work again. That way, I was able to work about 10 hours a day... It was important to me to work every day. I managed to work on Christmas day, just to be able to say I worked 365 days a year.

Writing day and night for months… that’s hard.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

If you really want to write, then shut yourself in a room, close the door, and WRITE. If you don't want to write, do something else. It's as simple as that.

I am always trying to write.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.

You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.

I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

At the end of the day, you can have all the talent in the world. But if you don't put in the work, nothing works. The engine doesn't start going. It's a car without gas.

Every day, you have to put in the hard work.

I just come every day, do my stuff before the game, work hard. You work hard, and it pays off.

You don't achieve success by "taking it easy" or "working on it later." You achieve it thru persistence and hard work.

I have a real worker-bee mentality. Just show up, just do it. Even if you feel like s--t and you think you're terrible and you'll never get better and it will never go anywhere, just show up and do it. And, eventually, something happens.

Work is doing it. Discipline is doing it every day. Diligence is doing it well every day.

I am a highly disciplined person. I get up at seven every morning and, still in my pajamas, sit down at my desk where my checkered ring binders and my fountain pen are ready for use. I try to write two pages every day.

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.