Be as creative in your tactics as you are in your writing. Find what gets your engine going, no matter how peculiar it may seem to others.

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part. If you’re not scared, you’re not writing.

Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

Writing can be wonderful therapy, and cheap at the price. At the very least, you eventually get bored by thinking about anxious topics and move on.

I think that simply nudging yourself into unfamiliar settings - physical or emotional - can produce surprising results on the writing front.

Willa Cather said that she write best when she stopped trying to write and began simply to remember.

Authors always feel in danger of being abandoned by loved ones. This is a potent fear. Yet it's as inevitable as writer's cramp when we presume to write words for others to read.

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.

Confidence matters a lot than what you want to say, if you are not bold enough.

As a creative person, you just put something out into the consciousness of the society you live in.

Oh! if people knew what a comfort to a horse a light hand is.

I hate tests. It's a really lousy way to judge a person's ability.

It's not easy to give up something you've had all your life.

To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.

Entrepreneurs are always super optimistic. If they weren't they wouldn't be entrepreneurs.

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)