Alain de Botton Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Doing Nothing, Exceed

  Twitter post from Mar 26, 2015

• Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Self, Careers

  Twitter post from May 28, 2013

• My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Sane

  "Office affairs". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. March 21, 2009.

• Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

  Alain de Botton

  Lonely, Book, Being Alone

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton (Chapter IV "Consolation For Inadequacy", p. 148), 2000.

• In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

  Alain de Botton

  Running, Writing, Envy

• Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Years

• Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Simplicity, Belief

• I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Fiction, Uncomfortable

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Use, Naivety

• An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

  Alain de Botton

  Teacher, Writing, Careers

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

• The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

  Alain de Botton

  Philosophy, Writing, Sadness

  "Alain de Botton: a life in writing". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2012.

• As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, What Matters, Records

• I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Trying, Attention

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Sick

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