Ellen Glasgow Quotes

For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale.

I used to think, 'I'm going to write.' I knew that from quite early on, but I also thought, 'Maybe I'll be an explorer or a spy,' and it all came from books.

At 3 years old, I was imitating and doing fun little commercials for the family. Then at 5, I knew, 'OK, this is something I really like.' At 8, I was crying in front of the mirror and my mom was like, 'Oh boy, here we go. We know what she's going to do.'

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

When I was in my teens, I was very, very keen on being the author of a book. What the book was was secondary. I wanted it to be in hardback. I didn't care how thick or thin it was, and I didn't actually care what it was about.

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I knew how to do it.

When I was a child, I loved making stories, so I thought maybe I would be a novelist.

When I was really young, my ambition wasn't to do science. I didn't really know that I could. It was to write a great novel.

I started writing stories when I was six years old. I was a very shy kid, extremely shy, and I had a fabulous first-grade teacher who told me to write.

It's always been a dream of mine to write comedy and be creative.

I had originally been looking at writing, including fiction.

It was a romantic dream to be a writer. It seemed like a calling.

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.

When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.

I think theres just this mystique of writing a book that appeals to people. A person has to really check their motives and say, Am I really being called by God to do this? Or is this just something that would look neat in my funeral? I dont mean to be harsh but I think a person really needs to, so they wont be disappointed.

Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.

For many years I wanted to be a rock star but of course that didn't work out. I did however write on napkins and pieces of paper sentences and occurrences. I decided maybe I should write a book because I had been writing so much. I'm actually writing a book based on The Room that will hopefully be published soon.

I wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.

I really like telling stories. When I was a kid, I wanted to write songs. In quite a fundamental, gratifying, childish way, I enjoy the doing of telling a story.

Since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. When I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.