Julian Barnes Quotes

God, I'm such a lazy writer - I can't even think up new names.

If I think about the writers I love or might be influenced by, I can't write at all, so I pretend there aren't any.

I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.

My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.

Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.

I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.

Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil than to say you can't write, or to blame your computer for losing your chapter than face up to your feeling that it's better lost.

In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.

These days I am ruled by doubt, and that is a difficult place to write from.

I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.

Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has been turned off. That's beyond frightening.

It's just so fragile. The growing sense of 'Oh, God, what am I doing? Am I any good? Will I ever work again?' All those questions of self doubt, they do creep in.

As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me.

I find it really hard to say anything coherent or interesting about the work I do.

There are whole months at a time when my head is so full of ideas that I wake in the middle of the night and lie in the dark telling myself stories. There are also long, dark nights when I just know I'll never write another word: I'm finished, empty, a husk... Oh dear, yes, twitch, yawn, how I've suffered insomnia for my art.

If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself.

Two years passed, and I had no second book to follow 'Roots.' Four years passed, six years. When a decade had passed without me having another book to follow 'Roots,' I was having serious private frustrations with myself.

Anxiety and doubt are among my biggest struggles as a writer.

The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it.

I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.

The creative process is often wrapped up in bottomless anxiety, and when the world applauds the product of that process, it soothes the anxiety. Briefly. Then the anxiety returns and even intensifies.