Eric Flint Quotes

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

It's taken me longer still to realize what a short span there is between those life experiences and the rest of your life. That's a job for the people who lived through it.

A lot of us are ruled by fear during our lives - afraid we'll get burgled, afraid a dog will bite us, afraid we'll get fat, afraid someone will leave us. Once you lose fear, life becomes sweeter, and that happens as you get older. I'm sure by the time I'm 80, I'll be able to do absolutely anything!

Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

It's a very rich brew that's in your psyche by the time you're in your 60s, and I think that's rather interesting. It makes you feel you've lived a very long life; it's like going on holiday to three different cities rather than spending two weeks in Lisbon. You look back on the holiday, and you seem to have been away forever.

When I look back on my twenties, I just remember being afraid of everything, and in my thirties, I'm actually excited by things. And if things don't work out, you know, by the time you've hit your thirties, you've had your fair share of disappointments.

By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.

By the time I was 23 or 24 and had written the first manuscript of 'The Final Winter', I knew I wanted to make it a career but didn't know how. It took me a long time to grow into myself, but when my love of writing returned, it did so with an enormous amount of venom. It is now a mainstay in my life.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

I was pretty much grown-up by the time I attended school in Britain - or as grown-up as I'll ever get.

Only if I reach 100 years old will I write a very complete autobiography. Not before.

When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.

People always talk about how time flies; it's become sort of a colloquialism now. You don't really understand it until you reach your late 30s and early 40s - and I'm sure time will move even faster as I get older.

Ultimately, you've got to have something to say, so a writer should continue learning things throughout life. But I don't think education makes one a writer.

Everything that I write is sort of autobiographical, and I don't know that I'm getting better, but I'm certainly running out of time.

To distract myself from writing, I was singing Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages.' You know, 'I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.' I thought, 'I should write a character like that.'

I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.

I think I am more liberated as an artiste in my late 40s.

I feel, as an artist, it's important for me to write, and that's a big part of what my journey is - being able to write my stories and talk about stuff.

By the time I was 12, I had memorised hundreds of couplets. I could recite for hours poems written by others. I knew I could write a line in metre. But I never dared to do it till I was 33 years old.

With time, you do get mature.

My hope is that I can continue writing and, in the future, I can just be Maya Soetoro-Ng.

They say you hit your stride as a writer at about 50. I'm hoping to do that.

Anything is possible in the life of a man if he lives long enough. Even maturity.