Evan Hunter Quotes

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.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

Art was always my main focus; I fell into writing by accident in the 1980s, writing magazine articles to pay for my studio. I have to put myself into the position of writing; sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes it works great.

I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.

I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.

Trust me, I did not set out to establish three pen names and, for the record, I do not recommend it as a career strategy. The idea back at the start was that I would stick with the name that proved most successful.

I did a lot of weird jobs, like most writers do.

I actually was doing ghostwriting jobs since I was 17 years old, so I've been supporting myself off and on with writing jobs for almost 10 years. But those were all things that I did off the books. And now I do a lot more writing on the books.

It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either.

I did TV for a bit, and somewhere along the line, I started writing a column for 'The Independent' newspaper in England, and now I write features for 'British Vogue.'

One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity.

I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.

I started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated.

It was always my dream to write for a living.

I could see no position to say, 'I'm going to make a living as a writer.' But I went to classes for it; I read every play in 'Theater' magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway - I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I'd see what shows I could get into.

The opportunity to write for the 'L.A. Weekly' has been one of the better breaks that has come my way in a long time.

As writers, we have to make our own work - as bloggers, writing for video games, whatever we can do. Everyone breaks into the business in a different way.

I had gone to work for 'Newsweek', left 'Newsweek' and went to work for 'Vanity Fair,' and then went back to 'Newsweek'. I came back to 'SI' as a contract writer.

From the late '70s to the early '90s, I wrote anything anybody would pay me for. This ranged from articles on how to clean a longhorn cow's skull for living-room decoration to manuals on elementary math instruction on the Apple II... to a slew of software reviews and application articles done for the computer press.

The idea that you could make a living from writing always thrilled me.

I've always worked in cinemas or cafes to make money because it turns out freelance journalism is quite hard to get into.

I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them.

To be a working writer is the holy grail, where you don't have three other jobs on top of that.

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

At the age of 10, I had my first piece published in what was known as the 'Junior Post,' which was part of the 'Yorkshire Post,' and it was just for kids. I read it every week. And I got paid for it. So I thought... 'I can actually do this. I can get paid to write, and this is going to be fine.' I wrote several pieces for them.