Noel Fielding Quotes

One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.

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

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge but to keep going.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

I find writing really hard, but then, every author I know finds writing really hard work.

Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.

I think writing in a group, even though it can be a challenge - you have to be on your toes all the time - is the way the best comedy gets written. It's very, very collaborative. A lot of comedy writers are definitely introverted nerds.

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

It's fun to have someone to talk to and get input from when you write. I usually get stuck when I'm just in my room writing by myself.

My two bits here are that writing is a solitary job but there are times when one needs to discuss the work, and see what's working and what's not.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

We were 15 minutes into it and nothing was happening; I thought, well, that's not going to work. Then all of a sudden everything clicked. I don't know how long it took us, but I would just show up at Alison's [McGhee] office. She would type and we'd just kick it back and forth. Writing is so scary for me, such a lonely endeavor, and it became a wonderful thing to show up and have somebody else go through it with me. It was actually a wonderful experience.

'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

Creating the characters is the most creative part of the novel except for the language itself. There I am, sitting in front of my computer in right-brain mode, typing the things that come to mind - which become the seeds of plot. It's scary, though, because I always wonder: Is it going to be there this time?