Elizabeth Strout Quotes

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.

I always wanted to be a writer. In the beginning, I thought I had to rewrite 'Gone with the Wind,' but eventually, I found my way and realized that wasn't me.

I even dream about writing. I'm talking seeing words across the page, whole paragraphs.

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I learned to read, I've wanted to share stories with others the way my favorite writers shared their stories with me.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking, 'I really want to write a novel.'

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I don't think I knew I would be a writer. I wanted to become a writer, and I tried to write.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.

I have dreamt of being an author since the age of 14, and writing about my experiences has always been a part of digesting an experience and sharing it with others.

I didn't know I was gonna be a writer when I started out.

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 would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.

What excites me, what attracts me, what gets me up in the morning is telling the next story and getting it out in front of readers and hoping they'll love it too.