Walter Jon Williams Quotes

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

Once I started to write, it was like all the lights came on. I was always making up stories in my head. I was a daydreamer. I didn't start as a child, but once I started, I couldn't stop. It was compulsive.

My identity is based around being a writer. I can't not write. It's a compulsion.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write.

I even dream about writing. I'm talking seeing words across the page, whole paragraphs.

I am a compulsive writer.

So many people romanticize writing. And I get it. But I never once wanted to be a writer.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

I can't envisage stopping writing.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be.

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.

The point really is that a writer tends to write a book that he or she tends to write. It's as simple as that. Of course, it's important to make a living and all that, but the main impulse as far as I'm concerned - and I'm sure as other writers are concerned - is to tell a story that I feel impelled by.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

I write because I feel driven to write. I write from a sense of inner necessity. I don't write for anything other than that.

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.

Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.

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

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

I never, ever decided that I had to write a novel because, to me, there's no such decision that ought to be made. It's only something that I felt compelled to do, and it began to evolve.