A Quote by Alain de Botton
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
Related Quotes
The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.
The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
One of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book
You can't worry if it's cold; you can't worry if it's hot; you only worry if you get sick. Because then if you don't get well, you die.
Don't worry whether or not I am now happy. Today is only chapter one, we have yet to write a book.
What is lacking in India are decent social services. The health service is a disaster. Education is a disaster.
Living out one's faith is either no way to live or the only way to live; it's either imprisonment, or the only path to freedom. It offers happiness, or it frustrates the pursuit. There is no half-love, half-religion, half-worship, half-belief, half-truth. There is no kinda-sorta.
I always knew from the beginning that this was the only way to write Then We Came To The End - that it had to be in first - person plural if it was going to illustrate how the individual becomes part of the collective. I had no interest in writing the book in a more conventional voice. It goes back to that fascination I had with telling a story in multiple ways. It was the only choice I gave myself, really - I said "This is it, pal. If you can't tell a story this way, you're going to have to abandon the book. Write it this way or give up."
My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
Each book develops a strong organic shape. And when that shape is complete, the book is complete. I don't know where the end is. I don't start at the beginning. It's like playing Tetris in my head in a very slow kind of way. All the shapes join up.
Almost everyone seems to worry about something, and yet, we rarely talk about worry as a problem. Maybe that is because worry is so integrated into the way we have come to live and be in the world that we don't even notice it.
You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.
There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.
I thought that deserved a book and feel like the door needs to be open so people can say, "Ok, here we go, let's deal with this" because we're not dealing with it. I'm waiting for somebody to write another book but it hasn't happened yet, though I guess mine's only been out for a year and a half.
I'm in a business where there's complete anarchy. You can't control it - you can only react to it. The control that people traditionally had over their message is gone. Look at Wikileaks: you have to approach everything you write on the basis it's going to be on the front page of the newspaper.
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