Amitava Kumar Quotes

There's no point for me in being a writer and having all these blocked places where I feel I can't think freely and imagine freely. There just really is no point.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

As a writer, I think the greatest danger would be self-censorship.

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion.

I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.

… most censorship took place in the heads of writers, and what the writers failed to cut usually got filtered out by editors in publishing houses.

Having to censor yourself - whether it's lying at the water cooler about how you spent your weekend, scrubbing your Facebook page of any revealing facts, or pretending to be with someone you aren't - is the antithesis of our foundation as a nation based on freedom of expression and association.

I don't like seeing talented storytellers ruled by fear.

I feel like I try to write from an honest of a place as I can - without scaring people off too much, I guess.

We all live in fear of getting blocked no matter what kind of art we're trying to do. It happens all the time, but I prefer to think of it as a bad day.

I'm squandering invaluable gray matter by censoring myself.

For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.

The things that block a writer are not the lack of words, but the same things that block all people - the difficulties of life.

If I had to write a novel, I'd start crying after three lines.

I've got to overcome that tendency to hide what I write or throw it away.

I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm a big fan of writing less than perfect things.

Self-censorship is the most devastating thing for an artist.