Paul Reiser Quotes

If you're not frightened that you might fail, you'll never do the job. If you're frightened, you'll work like crazy.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

If you have a good idea, get it out there. For every idea I’ve realized, I have ten I sat on for a decade till someone else did it first. Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

You combine hard work, creativity, and self-determination, and things start to happen.

Write as well as you can and finish what you start.

I always write and create. I'm never not creating. I'm always creating a show, every year, whether it gets picked up or not. I always sell a pilot or an idea. I like to be in control.

There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What also helps, though, is walking away from broken stuff. Not everything's going to work. Killing two years of your life trying to resuscitate a dying novel, I don't know. Why not just write a different one? You'll have more ideas. You can't help having ideas.

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

I think that my biggest attribute to any success that I have had is hard work. There really is no substitute for working hard.

The writer has two kinds of faith: actual writing and sitting openly. Have faith in your personal effort or sweat. And faith in God, or whatever you want to call it. Then the voices will come. Faith is the big deal.

A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.

As a writer, you need a strong sense of self-belief. And when it comes to writing, I've always had that.

I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.

I tend to be a lazy actress, unless I'm pushed.

I'd rather try and fail than not try at all, as they say.

When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

What people can excel our Northern and New England brethren in skill, invention, activity, energy, perseverance, and enterprise?

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.