Writing Obsession Quotes

I'm a perfectionist - I could rewrite forever.

So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

Writing has to be an obsession - it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.'

Novel writing wrecks homes.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

Since I was a small child, I was always writing either poems or plays... plays in which I had the starring part.

I am a compulsive writer.

Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist - except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.

I was always obsessed with being a writer of some sort.

Larry Grobel has the illness of all writers, he can't help himself. You're talking to him and all of a sudden, you say, "He's puttin' that in his cash register!"

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.

The only thing that makes me crazier than writing is not writing.

I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.

If you do everything in your power to avoid writing and still can't, then you must be a writer.

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen.

Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds.

Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.

They say every writer really just writes about one thing over and over. I guess my one thing is how the past impacts the present.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.