Hilary Mantel Quotes

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.

If you're going to write for a living, you should find something fun to write.

I didn't really realize that writing... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.

The first writing I did was short short stories for a newspaper syndicate for which I was paid five dollars a piece on publication.

Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.

I love writing, and I am one of the people who can do it and make a living.

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks - chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.

I decided at school that the only sensible way to make a living by arranging words in a pleasing order was by working on newspapers, because you got paid at the end of the week or the end of the month.

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

I do everything from home. I broadcast commentaries for CBS News Radio every day - from home, on a disk that I mail in. I write a weekly op-ed piece for the 'New York Daily News,' and any books or plays or movies that I'm crazy enough to write, I do that from home.

I thought I was going to write fiction but I fell backwards into non-fiction. It started when I got locked out of two apartments in one day and I told the story to some friends, one of whom worked in the 'Village Voice' and asked me to turn it into an essay.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.