Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

Writing wasn't about making money. I wanted to find fulfillment in writing and telling stories, and that's what's driven me.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

It seems that writing chose me. I feel that because I know history, and I know the history of so many cultures; I have lived a large life.

When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

I find myself really feeling like it's possible that maybe the greater contribution I'm going to be able to make through this next phase of my life might be as a writer writing wonderful parts for women, or even writing wonderful parts for myself, you know?

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.

I don't remember a time when I didn't define myself as a writer.

The silver lining of those years when I was trying to get 'Tinkers' published but couldn't were the years when I had to decide, Why do I want to be a writer? I realized that writing is the thing itself; writing is not a means to publication, writing is not a predicate of publication, so I spent years making art for art's sake.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

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 must say, it was a lot easier writing novels than I thought it would be. I think it's because I'm a novelist at heart, and it took me a while to figure that out.

As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

I became a writer out of the desire to express myself.

I always loved writing, be it creative writing for school or just poetry. I just loved writing, and in college, I started really trying to write songs and was copying other artists, just to figure it out - but I think freshman year of high school is when I realized, 'I want to be a writer. I have something to say.'

I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I found philosophy and how I'd understand the world.

Telling stories has been a compulsion of mine since I could physically say, 'Once upon a time...' But in high school, I realized I could study creative writing in college and actually pursue it as a viable career.

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was always writing. When I was a little kid, before I learned how to write, I would tell stories. But as soon I as capable, I started writing. I filled notebooks and notebooks until I got my first computer when I was 11. It never really occurred to me that I would do anything else.

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.

I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.

I want young readers to know that to tell their own story is the most important thing they'll ever do.