Jack Kerouac Quotes

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

With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one's reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.

If I had to write a novel, I'd start crying after three lines.

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.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

I'm into lately being a little less precious about writing and being like, "Okay, what if I just locked myself in my room, pretend that there's someone outside with a gun that's saying, 'Don't come out until you write something.'"

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.

When you write, don't say, "I'm going to write a poem." That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world."

Writing is the basis of all, because creating something that didn't even exist before is like taking an empty canvass. It is a wonderful thing to make something out of nothing. You've got an empty page, you've got an idea, and then you start typing and that is the most thrilling thing of all. And then if it becomes a movie or something else that's a plus, but the original writing of it is what's very exciting.

I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.

The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst - for me, at least - is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything that I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life.

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.