Roald Dahl

When you're writing, it's rather like going on a very long walk.

across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down.

Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill and you look down and you see something else, and you write that.

And you go on like that day after day, getting different views of the same landscape, really.

And the highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all when everything comes together.

And you can look back and see everything you've done, and it all ties up.

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman.

The writer has to force himself to work.

He has to make his own hours.

And if he doesn't go to his desk at all, there is nobody to scold him.

If he is a writer of fiction, he lives in a world of fear.

Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he's going to come up with them or not.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained.

For those two hours, he has been miles away.

He has been somewhere else, in a different place, with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into the normal surroundings is very great.

It is almost a shock.

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze.

He wants a drink.

He needs it.

It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him.