John Burdett Quotes

I've heard some writers say things like, 'Well, I'm a professional writer. I only start books I know I can finish.' I look at it maybe the other way: I only want to write books I'm not sure I can write.

Maybe I can't write without painting myself into a corner first.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.

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

I know someone might look at a creative person's job and think it's pretty fun. It is. It's the best thing in the world, but it's also extremely challenging to carve out your own completely unique path and not following a default path that someone else has already paved.

In 2006, when I had come very close to calling my agent and telling him I needed to take a break, NaNoWriMo was where I found my inspiration again.

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

I gave up writing for seven years (very biblical) and picked it up again, still clueless and still seeking the exotic, when I was twenty-one.

But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

There's no point for me in being a writer and having all these blocked places where I feel I can't think freely and imagine freely. There just really is no point.

These days I am ruled by doubt, and that is a difficult place to write from.

As creatives, it's a hard thing to push, to make something you're truly excited about, especially if you've written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down.

I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

It's really fun to go back and forth from acting projects to directing projects. You don't have as much responsibility when you're acting, but you have more fun. But then you miss having that responsibility, and so you go back and torture yourself and make a movie.

The idea of writer's block or not having inspiration is totally terrifying to me.

By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.

Almost six years ago, before I was given the incredible opportunity to be in 'Leaving Las Vegas,' I was going through a long period of artistic confusion. I'd spent years doing work that hadn't pushed me enough, and I was beginning to wonder if I had any talent.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

Writing is such a weird emotional thing. It's hard. If you sit down with a plan to write something, it's going to be harder.

You can tell when a writer moves out of a place of struggle and into a place of comfort, and it's always a bad thing.