Nick Tosches Quotes

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize.

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.

Our great American writers were all newspaper people.

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.

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 find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

My verses stand gawping a bit. I never get used to this. They've lived here long enough.

I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

Every word I write I suspect the next day.

For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.

For me a Writing Day was an occasion for self-reproach and panic, a time to lament the passing of the years, stare out of windows and remember that even those famous late starters Joseph Conrad and George Eliot had started by the age I was now.

I think I'm a good joke writer. I'm also very scared that the last joke I wrote is the last joke I'll ever write.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

I don't want to take all the time. I just want to do what you wrote and let me go from there. I don't want to miss something. You know, I'm not really a writer per se, but I can write. But I can't put a script together like they can.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

I'm never going to write a book like Anthony Sher did, you know, 'The Broadcaster Prepares.' I'm only talking to myself. I'd have liked to be a writer, or a journalist, but if things don't come easy to me I don't do them. I think if you're always thinking how difficult something is, you shouldn't be doing it.