Quote

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

Lawrence Block

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lawrence Block
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 24
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Buffalo
New York
Chip Harrison
Paul Kavanagh
Lee Duncan
Sheldon Lord
Giving
Five
Following
Writing
Lost
Pages
Thing
Write
Tears
Going
Helping
Took
Tearing
Always
Tell
Behinds
Tear
Would
Give
Behind
Permission
Nothing
Leave
Badly
Matter
Morning
Helps

More quotes by Lawrence Block

Image
If you build a better mousetrap, Nature will build a better mouse.
Lawrence Block
Image
I’ve tried writing and the sentences come out fine, but I write a few pages and I don’t want to go on.
Lawrence Block
Image
The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world there's precious little economic incentive to write one.
Lawrence Block
Image
My mother's father was from Sligo, and he used to say it was the hardest thing in the world to find a man alive in Dublin who wasn't in the GPO during the Easter Rising. Twenty brave men marched into that post office, he said, and thirty thousand marched out.
Lawrence Block
Image
Man, I so sick of dinosaurs. They wasn't extinct, I'd go out an' kill 'em myself.
Lawrence Block
Image
One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.
Lawrence Block
Image
Back then, before it became clear that democracy was best served by a drunken electorate, the bars in New York City were required to close on Election Day.
Lawrence Block
Image
Asking me why I did or didn't do anything is generally pointless. How do I know? And asking me what I'll do in the future is even less rewarding.
Lawrence Block
Image
As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.
Lawrence Block
Image
The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.
Lawrence Block
Image
To say I drank my way into marriage isn't much of an exaggeration, and it's none at all to say I drank my way out of it.
Lawrence Block
Image
Booze and tobacco and lots of sex. It keeps a lad young.
Lawrence Block
Image
If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.
Lawrence Block
Image
Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.
Lawrence Block
Image
And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.
Lawrence Block
Image
If fate sends you a lemon, use it to make lemonade.
Lawrence Block
Image
I don't plan an awful lot in life just as I don't plan an awful lot in my fiction.
Lawrence Block
Image
Ideas come to people who are receptive to them.
Lawrence Block
Image
Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.
Lawrence Block
Image
I think persistence in the face of adversity is an essential part of a writer’s job description. If you don’t care enough about it to avoid being easily disheartened that way, you really should be doing something else.
Lawrence Block