Groucho Marx Quotes

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

There's a lot of hurry up and wait. But it gives you time to write a song.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.

Sitting around and waiting for your muse is not the best choice.

Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

I am most drawn to writing when I have something else urgent to do.

I don't really manage my time. I really just wait until I'm inspired to do something. And when I'm inspired to do something, it just happens.

Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.

If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.

Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.

If you're not creating, you're waiting.

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer-he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.' In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things - read and write - and wait.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

You may delay, but time will not.

I have a hard time waiting for things to happen.