David Foster Wallace Quotes

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going.

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

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.

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

Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers.

I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing - I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project - it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

Writer's block? Don't worry about it. Either it goes away or you die.

Worry destroys the ability to write.

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.

I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration.

Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.

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.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

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

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

I can't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I have to start writing even if it's miserable some days.

I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work.

The hardest part is making the time to write. Not finding the time to write, mind you. Making.

If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself.