Steven Zaillian Quotes

I had expected that at some point during the first draft a light would go on, and I would understand, finally, how to write a book. This never happened. The process was akin to blindly walking in the dark, feeling my way only by touch, and only recognising dead ends when I smacked into them.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.

Man, I'm sick of doubt.

Doubts arise because of an absence of surrender.

I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.

I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.

Probably." "Again with the probablys." "A world full of probablys," she said.

There have been times when you doubt yourself. You don't know if you're working on the right things.

I don't know, and I would rather not guess.

Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

I have doubts! I have such doubts!

I waited a second. Should I? No... but I will.

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.

If you have any question in your mind, don't do it. If you go in thinking it's going to fix something that's wrong, don't do it.

Uncertain ways unsafest are, and doubt a greater mischief than despair.

So when people ask me if there's another one, I say, "You know, I don't think so, but I don't know, and I kind of don't understand why."

True, I've been a long time making up my mind, but now I'm giving you a definite answer. I won't say yes, and I won't say no - but I'm giving you a definite maybe.

The other guys are selling certainty. Not me. I'm on the corner with doubt.

When men know not what to do, they ought not to do they know not what

Where doubt is, there faith has no power.

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.

It is a big problem and so I don't know for sure if I say yes or no to Ferrari.