Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes

Most writers censor themselves in awful ways. I do, too.

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?

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

Fear is a killer, when it comes to the creative process.

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.

I don't fight creativity. I don't fight against not being creative. If I'm not being creative, I'm not forcing it.

Creating the characters is the most creative part of the novel except for the language itself. There I am, sitting in front of my computer in right-brain mode, typing the things that come to mind - which become the seeds of plot. It's scary, though, because I always wonder: Is it going to be there this time?

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

We shall have to remove everything that strangles artistic and scientific creativeness.

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to... There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.

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

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

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.

Rule of art: Cant kills creativity!

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

I've had one experience of writer's block in my life, and it was living hell. It was a terror for me.

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.

Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.

I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.

Write first, worry later.

The worst thing is the blank page at the start. Then the horrible things written on the blank page. Then deciding whether or not to throw out those horrible things: lame scenes, lame characters, bad ideas.

Guillermo del Toro is able to invent his worlds. I would find the pressure of having to invent crippling.

You can't slot a time and a space and think 'ok now it's time to sit and compose.' It just doesn't work like that for me.