Top 100 To Be A Writer Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.
Nicholson Baker
#4. To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.
Tobias Wolff
#5. If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.
John Updike
#6. Without question, I've either got to be a writer, or I fail.
Andrew Vachss
#7. I do have very deep, fond memories of my family in Mexico City, but I also remember feeling funny for not speaking English - I was basically an immigrant. But I picked up the language fast and soon I knew that I wanted to be a writer.
Louis C.K.
#8. Truth be told, I didn't want to be on T.V. I was going to be a writer or producer or a director, and at the end of my sophomore year, my department chairman put me up for a job doing weekend weather in Syracuse, New York.
Al Roker
#9. I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write.
Khaled Hosseini
#10. You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.
Matthew McConaughey
#11. The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.
Ayelet Waldman
#12. I feel better in my mind because I'm doing what God made me to do. He said, 'Go write books, Steve, and you'll be happy.' I'm happy now, and that has had an effect on my life and my relationship with my wife and kids and even my friends. I've always wanted to be a writer.
Stephen King
#13. My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.
J.K. Rowling
#14. To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.
Jane Lindskold
#16. I'm one of those people who always wanted to be a writer, so I have a fair amount of juvenilia, though fortunately, I was too old for my juvenilia to be on the Internet.
Ann Leckie
#17. I didn't actually get along with my dad when I was growing up, so by the time I was in my 20s, I didn't think I was going to be a writer.
Brian Herbert
#18. I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted.
Gore Vidal
#19. By instinct I'm an adventurer; by choice I'd like to be a writer; by pure, unadulterated luck, I'm an actor.
Errol Flynn
#20. I never really wanted to be a singer - not with any longevity. But I always wanted to be a writer.
Patti Smith
#21. Some of the things I liked in my years as a student in workshops: the occasional in-class prompt; discussions about what it means to be a writer in the world; professors who are brutally honest and encouraging at the same time (this is a tough one).
Mary J. Miller
#22. I wouldn't buy somebody's album on a dare if they called him a musician's musician. I don't write to be a writer's writer. I don't want to be like the little-magazine writer.
Barry Hannah
#23. To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.
Deb Caletti
#24. You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.
John Irving
#25. What I'd like to be is a unique writer who's different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers'.
Haruki Murakami
#26. I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.
Ron Rash
#27. You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing. You don't have a job? Get one. Any job. Don't sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity. Who are you? Prince William? No. Get a job. Go to work. Do something until you can do something else.
Shonda Rhimes
#28. If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.
Anthony Horowitz
#29. I want to be a writer you can always depend on for a good read during your vacation, during your flight, during a time in your life when you want to forget the world around you.
Jeff Abbott
#30. You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.
Anthony Doerr
#31. If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.
S.E. Hinton
#32. 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
#33. If you truly are going to be a writer, there must be somewhere within you the drive, the desire, to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and actually write.
Kaye Dacus
#34. I never really wanted to be a writer. I know it sounds strange, but I honestly believe that I didn't pick the story; the story has picked me. I've written absolutely no fiction before 'The Immortals of Meluha.' Not even a short story in school - absolutely nothing.
Amish Tripathi
#35. That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.
Kurt Vonnegut
#36. So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer.
Gayle Forman
#37. I love being able to be a writer. That's what I moved to New York to be.
John Searles
#38. If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
Jackie Collins
#39. If you wish to be a writer, write.
Epictetus
#41. One of the things I learnt over the years is that there is a craft to writing, like there is a craft to acting. I hadn't done my apprenticeship as a writer. I did try to be a writer for hire but I'm not any good at it.
Lennie James
#42. You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!
Joanna Trollope
#43. I always knew that I was going to be a writer. There was no question in my mind about that.
J. Michael Straczynski
#44. The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.
Janet Frame
#45. I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi - but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer.
Eduardo Galeano
#46. When I think about why I would be a writer, why I should continue to be a writer, it seems to me one of the few things you can dowhere you're never bored.
Gish Jen
#47. I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now I've decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.
Helen Oyeyemi
#48. Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
May Sarton
#49. 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
#50. Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.
Janis Ian
#51. There's a danger in romanticizing what it means to be a writer. Because what it really means is hard, hard work. It means tearing your hair out. Feeling like your head is about to explode.
Dani Shapiro
#52. Whatever you want to do in the industry, do it on the smallest level at first. If you want to be a writer, write a screenplay in your house. If you want to be an actor, put on a one-man show. If you want to be a stand-up comedian, go to an open mic.
Ike Barinholtz
#53. If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.
Kate DiCamillo
#54. 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
#55. My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn't poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it.
Richard Greenberg
#56. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
Ernest Gaines
#57. I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.
Dani Shapiro
#58. I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.
Paul Theroux
#59. I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.
Simon Callow
#60. 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
#61. I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was six or seven when I learned how to read, and I still remember it.
Signe Baumane
#62. My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.
Deb Caletti
#63. If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.
Albert Brooks
#64. Interviewer (Louise Tucker): What did you want to be when you grew up? Have you always wanted to be a writer?
IllumBerg: When I was a child I was busy being a child. [...]
Natasha Illum Berg
#65. My days are filled with writing, reading, and being a mom. Some days, I get to visit schools around the country and talk about what it's like to be a writer. I often feel like I'm pretending, because it's still hard for me to believe it when I see someone holding a book that I've written.
Kimberly Willis Holt
#66. I think every American kid grows up dreaming about being in the movies. That's completely normal for us. But I mostly wanted to be a writer, and I got taught the scriptwriting program.
David Labrava
#67. If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.
Austin Kleon
#68. Through the years the swirl of a pen, click of a key, and the idea of a story have been my deepest passion. I never just decided to become a writer. I was born to be a writer. I knew it from childhood.
Sai Marie Johnson
#69. So many people romanticize writing. And I get it. But I never once wanted to be a writer.
Rory Freedman
#70. 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
#71. There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.
M. Kirin
#72. Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer.
Robert Gottlieb
#73. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.
Katherine Mansfield
#74. A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life.
Jorge Luis Borges
#75. I knew from the time I was a young girl that I was destined to be a writer. I'm incredibly stubborn. The more someone tells me I can't do something, the harder I work to prove them wrong. My father's nickname for me when I was growing up was 'Hardhead.'
Lori Wilde
#76. If you've never hurt anyone, put down your keyboard and go apply for sainthood. You are the wrong kind of liar to be a writer.
Victoria Mixon
#77. I didn't really sign up to be a celebrity, I only signed up to be a writer.
Alan Moore
#78. I was always meant to be a writer. I've felt that way since I was a child.
Tess Gerritsen
#79. I wanted to be a writer first, and I struck out in the world to be a writer first, and then found stand-up as a more creative outlet, as a 3D way to be creative.
B.J. Novak
#80. You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.
Paul Theroux
#81. I wanted to be a writer, to write these stories that would make people see the world in a different way. But I ended up going to business school because I thought I could ultimately get to where I wanted to go faster that way.
Jeffrey Skoll
#82. We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.
David Lagercrantz
#83. I'm not disciplined enough to be a writer consistently. I write when I have to.
Vin Diesel
#84. 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
#85. I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.
Alan Furst
#86. I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.
Winona Ryder
#87. You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.
Susanna Kaysen
#88. As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer.
James Hilton
#89. The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.
Bruce Coville
#90. I kind of romanticized what it was like to be a writer and director when I was in my early twenties. Working as a production assistant knocked that right out of me.
Bill Hader
#91. When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word 'prose,' or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer.
Michael Hastings
#92. If you're going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones ... After all, there are better ways to starve to death.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#93. To be a writer you have to write
and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.
Michelle Richmond
#94. This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism.
Salman Rushdie
#95. If you want to be a writer, don't worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.
R.L. Stine
#96. I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
Joyce Carol Oates
#97. Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.
Harlan Coben
#98. If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you
and if you don't, nobody can help you.
Alma Alexander
#99. To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.
Dana Stabenow
#100. I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.
V.S. Naipaul
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
