Hubert Selby Jr. Quotes

I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.

I don't remember ever having writer's block. If I sit in there for four hours, I'll usually have something.

Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.

There's always a problem when you write, something you're trying to resolve, and sometimes a view can be inspiring.

While I do believe I become a technically better writer over time, in others ways writing gets harder because inspiration is finite.

When I write I just keep a waste paper basket handy in case I am experiencing a block.

I don't think in genres. Once I get a germ of an idea I wait for it to die! And if it refuses to die and keeps coming back, I start thinking more about it. Then come the world and the characters. I wait to get bored and if I don't get bored- then I start building on them.

Writing songs and lyrics is not that different from doing the 'Times' crossword every morning. They both give you a good mental workout.

I like confusing people and challenging myself.

I've been writing the show with Nigel Coan, the director of 'Luxury Comedy', and Tom Meeten. Three's good. With two, you can lock horns a bit. On your own, you're not sure whether what you've made is any good. I don't know how people write novels. I would go mad.

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.

To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a chapter in a book, every bit as tedious and hopeless and halting. But this is not to say that the piano hasn't helped my writing. It has, just not in the ways I expected.

While I was writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing' and struggling with the intricacies of the plot, I told myself the next book would be really simple and linear, and I'd have it all worked out before I set down a single word.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

If you try to write a novel in L.A., you're a chump; everyone is speeding by, and you're driving a rickshaw.

I didn't know how to be a writer. But I thought, 'I can do this.'

I can't read novels while I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in.

Imagination is really dependent on memory and observation, these things that we think of as part of nonfiction writing, actually.

I don't believe in writer's block. I'll get stuck, but being stuck, I'll still write a verse. If you know where you're going, you can always start from there and work your way back.

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] decided to give the friends an object and see what they did with it. The object was a sock and it went from there. Once we got going, once we got on a roll, it became very easy to work together and to figure out how to do it. We would meet for two-hour segments, usually from 10-12, two or three times a week. We met all one summer, and I think into the fall.

Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

I start out to write five days a week, and then it runs to six days and finally seven. Then, eventually, that wave of weariness overwhelms me and I don't know what's the matter. That is, I know but I won't admit it. I'm just tired from writing. As you get older, writing becomes harder. By that I mean you see so many more potentialities. Things like transition used to trouble me. But not any more. When I say it's harder, I'm not talking about facility. You learn all the so-called tricks, but then you don't want to use them.

One of the easiest things in the world is not to write... If it were easy, everyone would do it.