Hallie Ephron Quotes

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

I had a few stories and longer pieces published, but my first proper novel came in 2003, called 'Dead I Well May Be.'

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

I only published my first novel at the age of 40. Till then, I wrote short stories.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

I've been writing since I was about thirteen but didn't start a book until 2007. I spent four years writing a sci-fi novel before I wrote 'The Bone Season' at nineteen.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it.

I was twenty-seven when I began to write seriously, and after two years of rejections, my first book, 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo,' was accepted for publication.

I didn't really start to write until I was almost 30, and I started with the short stories.

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

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

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969.

I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then.

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

I wrote for 10 years before I even started the 'Percy Jackson' series.

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.