A Quote by Joan Didion

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

Joan Didion

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Always Because Book Dark Difficult Find Goes Hard Places Safe Write

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Joan Didion
American - Author
Born: December 5, 1934

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.

Cheryl Strayed

The reason why we find so many dark places in the Bible is, for the most part, because there are so many dark places in our hearts.

August Tholuck

Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places.

Irvine Welsh

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

Damon Galgut

The scene that scares you the most, that you don't want to write because it's the most difficult to write-that's the one you have to write. So I think when people have writer's block, it's because what they have to write scares them. And that's usually the heart of the book.

Marcy Dermansky

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.

Andre Dubus III

There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.

Tom Odell

When I write a book I write the best that I can and so much of that for me is following the book's demands, the subject's requirements - I love books, I always have. They have always been one of the places where I have felt very happy in the world. When I was younger, I loved to read genre fiction - I loved the magic-carpet ride of story! Now I need other things - I need the beautiful particular and strange language and form which brings a writer's book to life in me and speaks to my intellect, and, dare I say it, to my soul.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Of course there's pressure, and it's still there with every book. Each one is harder to write than the last, basically because you're always trying to write a better book. You won't always succeed, of course, but that has to be what you're shooting for.

Mark Billingham

It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

Neil Simon

For me, it's just a normal artistic endeavour to explore the dark side. Certainly, I'm not alone in it. Artists generally don't like to accept the version of reality that society and culture hand them. They want to know what's really going on. So you're always looking in the ceilings, under the floorboards and behind the walls, trying to find the mechanisms, the structures, and the truth. I find that often leads you into some dark places.

David Cronenberg

Turning the blog into a book was extremely difficult, a tremendous amount of sustained, hard work. Blogging is easy; writing a book is difficult.

Kate Christensen

I've always wanted to write a song that goes, "I love you" and a book that goes, "Something happened." Something very direct.

Devendra Banhart

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Madeleine L'Engle

I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.

Tom Green

There are some words I find impossibly difficult ... 'Love,' 'feeling' and especially 'happiness' are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven't experienced any of them but because whenever I think about using the words I don't really know what anyone means by them. I'd find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing.

Jenny Diski

A Quote by Joan Didion

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