To Be A Writer Quotes

I want to be a writer, not an engineer who writes books.
- Paulo Coelho

I've discovered my vocation. I want to be a writer.
- Paulo Coelho

If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you -- and if you don't, nobody can help you.
- Alma Alexander

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
- Margaret Atwood

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
- Russell Baker

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.
- James Baldwin

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.
- Russell Banks

I want to be a writer someday.
- Andrea Barber

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
- Julian Barnes

I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.
- Haruki Murakami

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.
- Haruki Murakami

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
- Haruki Murakami

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.
- Haruki Murakami

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.
- Haruki Murakami

I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
- Carl Sandburg

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.
- Sandra Brown

Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.
- Sandra Brown

No wonder you want to be a writer. How can you not, with all that behind you? You practically are a novel already.
- Sylvia Brownrigg

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.
- Melvin Burgess

I really want to be a writer but I don't know what to write about"
"You could write about us
- Stephen Chbosky

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.
- William S Burroughs

- I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it.
+ Then you shouldn't be a writer.
- Candace Bushnell

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.
- Tim Cahill

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.
- Jonathan Lethem

Not everyone is meant to be a writer," Shyla said. "I do believe, however, that everyone has a story within them to be written.
- Barbara Casey

I always wanted to be a writer.
- Jung Chang

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.
- Stephen King

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.
- Stephen King

As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.
- Hunter S Thompson

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
- Jackie Collins

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
- Francis Ford Coppola

I had declared in public my desire to be a writer... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy.
- Pat Conroy

Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.
- Lili St Crow

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.
- Kate Dicamillo

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.
- Anthony Doerr

In high school, my goal was to be a writer for SNL, then I got into the acting.
- Illeana Douglas

To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
- Milan Kundera

I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.
- Christopher Durang

If you wish to be a writer, write.
- Epictetus

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.
- Louise Erdrich

I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
- Garrison Keillor

I had all the usual ambition growing up. I wanted to be a writer, a musician, a hockey player. I wanted to do something that wasn't nine to five. Acting was the first thing I tried that clicked.
- Michael J Fox

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.
- David Frum

Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help.
Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you?
Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.
- Cornelia Funke

I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.
- Neil Gaiman

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.
- David Guterson

I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.
- Walter Hill

Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.
- Janis Ian

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.
- Jim Jarmusch

It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.
- John Keegan

And I definitely wanted to be a writer, but I felt a duty now, having used up those educational resources, I felt a duty to the church and my parents to become a priest.
- Thomas Keneally

If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)
- Anne Lamott

All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.
- Stephanie Lennox

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
- Doris Lessing

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.
- Margaret Mahy

To be alive and to be a 'writer' is enough.
- Katherine Mansfield

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.
- Katherine Mansfield

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I didn't raise Todd to be a writer, but he happened to be one anyway.
- Anne Mccaffrey

IF you wish to be a writer then don't wait until you write the "great American novel" for they aren't written they are created. If you don't write at all you won't know how "great" that simple book can be.
- Shiree Mccarver

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.
- Robin Mckinley

I really wanted to be a writer.
- Nancy Meyers

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning..
- Walter Mosley

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?
- Ann Patchett

I'd always liked to write, but I never wanted to be a writer, because it seemed a sissy occupation. It is. To this day, I find it terribly easy. And so, rather than trying to hunt up a text, I just wrote one.
- Daniel Pinkwater

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
- J B Priestley

To be a writer and know the pain of artistic block is to know real frustration (though it's not quite as bad as constipation)!
- John D Rhodes

To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.
- Michelle Richmond

Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to question whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you, without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward, which might possibly come from without.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
- May Sarton

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.
- Dan Simmons

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.
- Paul Simon

To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.
- Dana Stabenow

I want to go to college. I'm going to take four years off. I don't want to miss that. I want to be a writer. I think that'd be awesome.
- Kristen Stewart

You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!
- Joanna Trollope

Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.
- Leon Uris

He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn't good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950's, he was employed for Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported back to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again.
- Mark Vonnegut

Don't say it is too hard or you can't find the words and please don't tell me there isn't enough time in the day. Writers start each day with a pen in their hand and do not make excuses. To be a writer is to do what is too hard, to find the words when others could not and make time no matter what. The proof is in the book you hold, the words you read and the stories that live on forever.
- C K Webb

Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.
- Bradley Whitford

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot...I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.
- Phyllis A Whitney

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
- P G Wodehouse

Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing... if you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famouswhich is very different.
- Jane Yolen

I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer.
- Marguerite Young