John Fogerty Quotes

Writers often write their best when they are feeling their worst

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

How many artists subscribe to the notion that creative success depends on input from the fickle muse or her modern avatar, mental illness? Probably very few.

When I can't write, it depresses me.

Writer's block is a myth. I never see the gardeners suffering from gardening block.

Philip Larkin didn't write for several years before his life ended. And when he was asked why he didn't write, he said the muse deserted him. And when I read that, it really had a profound effect upon me, sort of scared me. So that's why I think I have no right to assume that some thought is going to come... But I think, in my imagination, if it is it, there will probably be something else I'm interested in.

I don't think of myself as a great improver. A lot of times there's long periods of silence when everyone in the recording studio is looking at their watch and waiting for me to say something. And I'm searching desperately in my brain for anything before something dribbles out.

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic.

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.

When you're an artist, there's always a moment in your life when you think you're not inspired and instead of doing things and instead of travel and instead of falling in love, you're just depressed, so you don't move, so you don't change. So you're not inspired.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

We all get as miserable as Erika M. Andersen sometimes, but we rarely approach her musical-ideas-per-miserable-minute ratio.

As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.

I write early in the morning. I just wake up whenever I feel awake and I have to be sitting and writing pretty soon after that. If I take too long to think about the impossibility of what I'm trying to, I'll be defeated by it.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

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

I wasn't creative when I was depressed. When my depression got treated, I was creative again.

Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.

Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.