Nora Roberts Quotes

I worked at a hot dog place, a bagel place, the Jersey Store and the hottest fashion joint around. I was getting too famous to work there anymore. I was almost showing up as a joke. I made $2,000 on my show the previous night and I'm going to go shopping during my five-hour shift.

When I graduated from college, I went straight to work for a federal contractor, a desk job, and they were great to me, they loved me, I was like their mascot, but I just couldn't stand working in an office. I just hated it. And so one day I went in and said, 'I'm sorry, this is my two-weeks notice, I'm quitting to become an artist.'

I came very close to quitting my job for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. I seriously considered packing up my office and heading home to Colorado.

I left advertising as fast as I could in 1961. And I haven't ever thought about going back.

There might come a point where I don't want to be in this industry at all.

Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."

Many years ago I had two small children, and I wanted to be able to be home when they got home from school. And I didn't like the direction journalism was taking. I thought if I could write books, I could work at home and have the best of both worlds. I wrote my first mystery while still working full time, and it didn't sell, but the next one did sell, so I quit my job for the world of fiction. Scary, but I've never regretted it for a single day.

I guess if everything went tits up, having no work whatsoever, obviously you have to do something else. At the moment I don't see myself quitting, but I'm open minded about it.

When the joy of the job's gone, when it's no fun trying anymore, quit before you're fired.

You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family.

I'm very happy. I like my work and I like the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert - I like that. And seeing clients, doing group therapy, writing books.

I love learning, so it's definitely something I could see myself doing when I'm 30 or something. I always wanted to go for music production and health and psychology. But my whole life, I was in a gym for eight hours a day. I'm ready to be young and have fun.

Setting is a major aspect in writing all of my books, both in terms of natural and cultural environments.

I think if I have established anything in my book, it's that a key element of being my friend is being comfortable with my forced fun.

Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.

I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.

I loved comic books. I loved Miss Marvel. I talk about Harley Quinn all the time because I think playing villains is so much more fun than playing the good guy because who wouldn't want to go to work and just be crazy?

If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.

I didn’t know that it was going to launch a quote-unquote comedic career. I just wanted to do anything other than wait tables.

The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

I should have written books instead of reading them.

It's really, really eclectic. It's not a business book [Girlboss], but it's still a book that should make you want to get up and do things and think about your life. And for a book that looks that beautiful on a coffee table, I think that's a very special thing. So it's hopefully a new genre I guess, of book. It was so fun to put together and fun to write, that was really a pleasure.

It's fun to play somebody who has no boundaries or rules. There's no book you can read on how to play a witch, so you just create a version. It's really great!

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.