Virginia Euwer Wolff Quotes

I have hesitation making any kind of decision, really in my life. I'm really slow at it.

I was fine with numbers, but it took me a longer time to grasp simple things like spellings.

I'm very slow. I'm a slow learner.

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

Sometimes that Dutch consensus approach doesn't move you forward fast enough.

I can be indecisive about things - and the less important something is, the more indecisive I am.

I think it works differently for everyone. Some people do amazing things with research, but for me, it just gets convoluted, and I start to think too much.

It often takes time for the Israeli government to get things done.

If you're making a bunch of little decisions - like, do I read this email now or later? Do I file it? Do I forward it? Do I have to get more information? Do I put it in the spam folder? - that's a handful of decisions right there, and you haven't done anything meaningful. It puts us into a brain state of decision fatigue.

Fear of decision-making is one thing I personally resist, and I'm trying to encourage others to resist as well.

It's hard to tell if I've had writer's block because it seems to me that it's when nothing comes, but, you know, every day you stare at that computer screen, and I think, 'It's never going to happen today. How can I write three pages?' And the hours pass, and they haven't shown up, and then at the very end it always happens, so it's willpower.

When information overload occurs, pattern recognition is how to determine truth.

If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go.

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.

I'm just very, very slow. I would not make it as a journalist, I've got to tell you. I sweat bullets over every sentence, and sometimes, you know, a day will pass and I've written one paragraph, and I've been at the computer for four hours.

I've learned one thing in politics. You don't take a decision until you have to.

I'm not a quick study, so I'm always struggling for my words right up until.

When you're having trouble making a decision you're making it too soon.

I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.

Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.

When I'm tired and therefore indecisive, it can take half an hour to choose the book I am going to have with me while I brush my teeth.

It takes forever if you go by inertia.

I decided a long time ago but sometimes it takes you 40 years to get around to doing something - and that's the truthful answer.

But I still feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, 'alright sucker, now what?'