Judy Blume Quotes

I wanted to be Carrie Vaughn the awesome writer, not the chick who writes the 'Kitty' books.

I think a lot of people assume you need to be born into a special creative family to have a career as a writer. So I never thought it would happen for me.

After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.

What would have become of me if no one had wanted to read my books? And don't forget all those who have written of me.

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

Finding out I was pretty was a very nice realisation.

Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.

I didn't make 'The New York Times' bestseller list until 'Charmed Thirds,' and then again for 'Fourth Comings.' It gave me a certain validation, and it certainly helps position me for future books, but it's not something I think about on a daily basis.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have.

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

I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn't even a pipedream.

I've only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I've written all of them.

Basketball wasn't going particularly well, but in my senior year, I did a play and got a wonderful card from a professor that said, 'I don't know what your plans are after school or if acting is a part of it, but you have something special.' Hearing that from someone who I had so much respect for pointed me in that direction.

The time I spent in New York when I was 17 gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams with my whole heart.

At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.

I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

Success in the movies has pushed me to places I didn't know I was allowed to go.

There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers, and it is this -- the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.

As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.

I know. I'm Darren. I don't know what I'm doing here.

Sometimes we don't know what we want until we don't get it.

The more you know your beauty, power, and worth, the less you NEED others to VALIDATE you. The less you know your beauty, power, and worth, the more you NEED others to VALIDATE you. The more you know, the less you NEED.

I realized that I might not ever make it as a writer, that it might be because I wasn't good enough, or that it might be because the odds were just too long.