I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier. And that doesn't seem fair. I mean, I've been doing it so surely I should be getting better at it, at least a little bit blasé.. And it seems to be working absolutely the opposite. This book [Big Brother] I had no confidence in the entirety of its composition, and I only decided I liked it when I finished the very final draft. This means I'm in a state of semi-misery for a long time. And I can't blithely seem either that's some little game I'm playing with myself because, you know, you can easily come along and you don't like what's you're writing for good reason. Right? So, yeah, it's very anxious making, I don't think it's so much the becoming a little more successful, I think it's becoming slightly more aware of how much has already been written, and just becoming less self-impressed as the years go by. More impressed with some people who are better than I am, but.. It doesn't wow me that I can write a sentence any more. It has to be a really good sentence. And.. I think that's what potentially leads to paralysis in late career, is a kind of killing humility. Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2013 . Lionel Shriver
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic. - Unknown
  2. After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love... - Paulo Coelho
  3. Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHTand knowledge, and by learning the lessons that areacculated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life! - Allan Rufus
  4. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. - Unknown
  5. Do not let your difficulties fill you with anxiety, after all it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly. - Unknown
More Quotes By Lionel Shriver
  1. But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be...
  2. Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.
  3. The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job.
  4. Outside, she thought that there ought to be a word for it: the air temperature that was perfectly neither hot nor cold. One degree lower, and she might have felt a faint misgiving about not having brought a jacket. One degree higher, and a skim...
  5. Wasn't there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the kind that draws Valentines and learns to spell Mississippi?
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