Anthony Horowitz Quotes

I feel a bit scared at times as I feel if I am not convinced about the scene, the audiences won't be either, so I have to give my best.

If you start imagining an audience for yourself, you don't do justice to the job. You fall into that trap of a self-image.

I think writers are very anxious.

I cannot write a speech. The pen is an extinguisher upon my mind and a torture to my nerves. I am the most habitual extemporaneous speaker that I have ever known.

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

Performance is hard. I know this. I really enjoy it, but I have bombed, I have fluffed, and I have said the wrong thing.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

As an actor, you're constantly riddled with self-doubt. You are your own worst critic.

If you are stymied as a writer, if it's just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don't feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence.

When I was younger, the red carpet used to terrify me because it's not about playing a part: you're not in a film pretending to be someone - you are yourself. It's intimidating.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

I'm intimidated every day I go on the stage and everyday I go on a movie set. It's terrifying and I always want to reshoot the first day or the first week, I'm so terrified.

I know when I am on stage and I'm kind of on the right track - hopefully most of the time. But a lot of time I'm not.

Being a background singer is one thing, but being on stage as the star is something else again. When you walk out there with all those people staring at you, it's like you're naked to the world. And I hate being criticized.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

I didn't want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren't good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that's not the healthiest of responses.

My weakness as an actor is that I think too much.

You're here to sweat. This program is live. There's about one thousand million people watching you. So, you remember - one wrong word, one foolish gesture and your whole career could go down in flames. Hold that thought and have a nice night.

You can take 100 penalties in training, but when you go out on that pitch in front of all those people and the television cameras, it's completely different.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

It's a phobia I have. I never assume I'm going to be able to write another album after I finish one.

You know the actor's nightmare is getting up onstage and not being prepared? I think the writer's nightmare is giving a reading and somebody standing up and saying, 'That's not your story.'