Mary Roach Quotes

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

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

It was always my dream to write for a living.

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

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

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

It's fun being paid to read stuff and air your opinion about it - pretty much a dream job for a writer.

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 didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home.

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

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

I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.

It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines.

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.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

I always wanted to be some kind of writer or newspaper reporter. But after college... I did other things.

But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

I think the astronaut job is the best job in the world. I realized when I was older and started applying for it that it's a pretty cool job.

I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

Is there any other job that beats being an astronaut? Who didn't want to be an astronaut? That is my question.