Rose Wilder Lane Quotes

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.

Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers

In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.

I am most drawn to writing when I have something else urgent to do.

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you’re dead, you’ll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who aren’t holding any paper.

There's so much writing I could have done and so many ideas that I had and so many things I wanted to work on that I didn't. I like too much having things in my head rather than doing the work.

Most people spend their entire lives on a fantasy island called 'Someday I'll.'

The poor, the unsuccessful, the unhappy, the unhealthy are the ones who use the word tomorrow the most.

When you consider what you would love to accomplish in your life but feel ill-prepared to bring it about, picture the eighty-nine Michelangelo living five centuries ago, painting, sculpting, and writing. Imagine he is telling you that you can create whatever you desire, and the great danger is not in having too much hope, but in reaching what you have perceived as hopeless.

If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.

When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life's morning.

The biggest pitfall to avoid is not writing. Not writing is really, really easy to do, especially if you're a young writer. The hope that elves will come in the night and finish it for you, is a very common one to have. That is my main recommendation - you have to write, and you have to finish what you write and beyond that, it's all detail.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!

Why are you in such a rush?" Sophia asked, and her grandmother answered that it was a good idea to do things before you forgot that they had to be done.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

There's a lot of hurry up and wait. But it gives you time to write a song.

I still don't know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.

Once again, I've been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I'm currently stuck with.

I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.

Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?

We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

I don't have the patience to sit and write.

I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.