Alexandra Petri Quotes

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.

I have always loved to read, and now that I have penned 10 novels and a few magazine articles, I have fallen seriously in love with writing stories and seeing them go out into the world. It's magical, you know?

I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader.

Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.

You want an audience. If you didn't, you wouldn't be a writer. The biggest motivation to write is the knowledge that someone will read it.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

It really was total heaven to be a writer. As a model or actor you are employed on someone's whim. As a writer, you are in control.

I wanted to be a writer and I ended up being a writer.

I never thought I would grow up writing a book.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

My truest passion is writing, so I continue to do that on my own while seeing what all the buzz is about being in front of the camera.

For me, there is nothing worse than the knowledge that my life holds nothing for me but being a writer.

I write things in my house, and hopefully there's a reader out there who enjoys it and has an experience with it, but that's very different than a performer on stage, where there's an immediate dance with the audience. It's incredibly powerful.

I was definitely meant to be a young adult author, and I love it - I'm here to stay!

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

Writing is hard work, but a lot of fun, too. It allows me to live out some of my fantasies.

I enjoy writing.