Rian Johnson Quotes

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've only suffered writer's block badly once, and that was during the writing of Chamber of Secrets. I had my first burst of publicity about the first book and it paralysed me. I was scared the second book wouldn't measure up, but I got through it!

Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?

I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'

The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipotence.

It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

As a writer, you live in permanent self-doubt; you're on permanent trial.

I'm kind of an insecure artist. I hop from piece to piece. I always think my life depends on every painting. Every painting is my first painting.

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.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

A lot of times, I write and have to scrap it. You don't know what I'm talking about because the words are too much, and it's overwhelming.

There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

I think any time you set out to make something, anybody is going to be confronted by those voices in their head that say "You don't need to do this. Someone else can do this better. You should probably just quit right now."

You never get over the fear of writing.

I'm having bigger problems when I'm writing.

I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.

I'm always struck with writing - I constantly feel like I don't know what I'm doing and I'm starting over.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."

It's so easy to get caught up in your own self-doubt when you're writing. It can be so easy to tell yourself, "Who am I kidding?"

...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

Every single time I step into the studio, I say, 'Can I still do this? Do I still have it? Have I ever had it?' I suppose there's a good amount of self-loathing that goes into any form of artisanship.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.