I've been quite frustrated during the past few weeks. I'm having a heck of a time with my writing. Everything I pen sounds so constipated. And now that I look back on my previous writing—whether it be formal essays or just casual articles—it seems this has been a long-standing difficulty for me. I hope I'll be able to learn how to tackle this problem.

Last night, in my hunt for some encouragement, I found several quotes that quelled my frustration and provided a healthy dose of inspiration. I'd like to share some of them here.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.—Julie Burchill (b. 1960), British journalist, author. Sex and Sensibility, Introduction (1992).

Writing is a dreadful Labour, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.—Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish essayist, historian. Two Notebooks of Thomas Carlyle (1898, p. 136).

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.—Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), U.S. author. Letter, 22 April 1949, to publisher Hamish Hamilton (published in Raymond Chandler Speaking, 1962).

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.—E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931), U.S. novelist. Interview in Writers at Work (Eighth Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1988).

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money. —J. P. Donleavy (b. 1926), Irish-American novelist. Playboy (Chicago, May 1979).

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.—William Faulkner (1897-1962), U.S. novelist. Interview in Writers at Work (First Series, ed. by Malcolm Cowley, 1958).

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilirating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!—Edna Ferber (1887-1968), U.S. writer. A Peculiar Treasure, ch. 1 (1939).

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.—Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), U.S. author. Address recorded for the Nobel Prize Committee, 10 Dec. 1954, accepting the Nobel Prize for literature (published in Carlos Baker, Hemingway: the Writer as Artist, ch. 13, 3rd ed., 1963).

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.—Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author, lexicographer. Adventurer, no. 138 (London, 2 March 1754; repr. in The Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 2, ed. by W. J. Bate, John M. Bullitt and L. F. Powell, 1963).

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.—Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), English scholar, essayist. Quoted in: Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, vol. 1, ch. 8 (ed. by Abbott and Campbell, 1897).

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.—Norman Mailer (b. 1923), U.S. author. "Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself" (first published in New York Times Book Review, 17 Sept. 1965; repr. in Conversations with Norman Mailer, ed. by J. Michael Lennon, 1988).

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present—henceforth?—the subject to which you are condemned.—Howard Nemerov (1920-91), U.S. poet, novelist, critic. Journal of the Fictive Life, "Reflexions of the Novelist Felix Ledger", sct. B (1965).

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.—Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), U.S. humorous writer. Interview in Writers at Work (First Series, ed. by Malcolm Cowley, 1958).

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.—George Sand (1804-76), French novelist. Letter, 4 March 1831 (published in The Letters of George Sand, 1930).

Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness.—Georges Simenon (1903-85), French mystery writer. Interview in Writers at Work (First Series, ed. by Malcolm Cowley, 1958).

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.—John Steinbeck (1902-68), U.S. author. "In Awe of Words" (first published in 75th Anniversary edition of The Exonian, Exeter University; repr. in Writers at Work, Fourth Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1977).

Let's face it, writing is hell.—William Styron (b. 1925), U.S. novelist. Interview in Writers at Work (First Series, ed. by Malcolm Cowley, 1958). Writing, Styron said in the same interview, is a "fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats . . . for jittery people."

Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to.—Carl Van Doren (1885-1950), U.S. man of letters. In answer to a question put to him by Mary Margaret McBride. Quoted by James Thurber in: Bermudian (Nov. 1950).

Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.—John Wesley (1703-91), English preacher, founder of Methodism. Reporting the words of "a good man", in journal entry, 1 Sept. 1778.