Adam Gopnik Quotes

Like most writers, I find the Web is a wonderful distraction. Who doesn't need that last minute research before writing?

I really love writing, but I am very easily distracted: my two cats fighting, a rainbow, a TV show... I have to use every trick to keep myself at the computer.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.

I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.

For me, the enemy is procrastination, and losing attention, you know? It's not the writing that's difficult, it's sitting down to write - if that makes any sense. I feel I can write pretty well, and I can write pretty effectively.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.

I find writing really difficult - definitely the most difficult of all the things I do.

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it.

But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

How can you stop writing?

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I find it so easy to get distracted - I try not to do more than one thing at any one time.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

I hate writing.

I don't want to talk too much about the nitty-gritty of writing. It's rather like a pressure cooker with a certain amount of pressure in it - the more you let out, the less you cook.

Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

I write slowly and get distracted a lot.

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.