Dorothy Parker Quotes

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

When I'm writing, I'm locking myself in a room. I'm the worst critic in the world. I write something and then I beat myself up. I'm like "Vin, you're retarded, that makes no sense."

Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

I never made a film which fully satisfied me.

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

My stories are never quite good enough.

Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.

I just mean it's very difficult for me to watch my work, in some ways, because I am critical of what I didn't get across or I thought I was making one point.

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.