Jonathan Galassi Quotes

Putting your work out there is scary!

I'm excited and terrified to write something new.

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.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

You have to write about what scares you.

Doubt is the enemy of mania. It's trying to get aloft strung with weights. The moment I like writing is three sentences in, when somehow those weights drop away, and you can invent. I cannot tell you the dread I have.

Anybody who tells you they're not scared when starting a new book project is a very good liar.

I'm a guy so I equate vulnerability with fear. What makes me fearful. I feel vulnerable when I release material, my work, to the world, and I have no control over the outcome. Those are very vulnerable moments. I'm getting married on Friday.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process.

Getting to the point where I was ready to write a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to write a large piece of fiction.

What if it's boring - or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

I've always been slightly afraid of coming out with my record because it's so personal to me. Now it doesn't feel as frightening as I thought it would.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don't want to make a picture.

Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself unable to do so, the reason being, I take it, that writing, even of the most impersonal sort, is for me a divestment, a striptease, even, so that if I start off undressed, I have nowhere to go.

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

I don't think I've ever frightened myself before when writing, but there were areas where there was terror, as though I was looking into somewhere that I didn't know existed before, and it frightened me.