Harper Lee Quotes

I'm like a junkie for writing.

I'm always writing. I'm an obsessive. It's not because I'm a disciplined person. It's because I'm crazy about it.

I am a compulsive writer.

I write manically.

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen.

I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it.

When I'm really fixated on a bit of writing, I can easily spend six days without leaving the house and barely leaving my room.

I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.

I have nothing in my life besides my work. I am obsessed with it. I leave my house only when I'm forced to.

Once you start writing something obsessively, it's almost like someone has to rip it from your hands in order for you to put it down.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

When I am working on a movie, all I want to talk about is the movie. All I want to be with are the movie people. It's like a clan. If I'm asked to people's houses for dinner, I hate to go, because they'll talk about other things.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

I've tried to quit writing several times, but I enjoy it too much.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.

Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it's so essential that when I'm involved in the actual process, my so-called 'real life' becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Some designers retain a sense of humour about what they do, but others are deathly serious and have no life outside of it; they're lying awake night after night constructing dresses in their heads.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

Once I start writing, I can't stop.

Once I started to write, it was like all the lights came on. I was always making up stories in my head. I was a daydreamer. I didn't start as a child, but once I started, I couldn't stop. It was compulsive.

I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.

I think I would die if I couldn't get to the typewriter every day. I really need that.