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Staying Motivated

“The job of the writer is to become her characters.” —Bret Anthony Johnston

"It's an adrenaline surge rushing through your body. You have this spark of an idea that keeps threatening to burst into flames and you have to get the words out on paper to match this emotion or picture in your head. After this comes the work of cleaning up the mess that you made." —Janet West

"The best pearls of writerly wisdom…are like the rules of chess: easy enough to understand in principle, but complicated enough that they take a lifetime to perfect." —William Kowalski

"It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does." —William Faulkner

“I have to restrain myself constantly…I’d end up writing books as long as War and Peace.” —Zadie Smith

"Writing is turning one's worst moments into money." —J. P. Donleavy

 “The narrator of my novel…was like a familiar stranger to me, someone I’d never seen before but
whom I knew intimately.” —William Kowalski

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann

“In my experience, the best creative work is never done when one is unhappy.” —Albert Einstein

"Books are never finished; they are merely abandoned." —Oscar Wilde