Quotes About Commitment

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

When you own a piano, it's harder to think about moving.

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.

When a long book succeeds, the writer and reader are not just having an affair; they are married.

I write for love, but love doesn't pay the bills.

If you want to play, you gotta pay.

That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what.

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

I hold to no God, Roland said. I hold to the Tower, and won't pray to that.

If you love me, then love me.

A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.

No bounce, no play.

Whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There's someone who knows . Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

Baby can you dig your man? He is a righteous man!

Eighty percent of success is just showing up.

How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing? How much courage to go on and do that after you've spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, I have to quit these peas. Peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans.

When asked, How do you write? I invariably answer, one word at a time.

You still owe a debt. Pay it.

That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

If loyalty was toilet paper... we'd be hard-pressed to wipe our asses, old buddy.