Steven Patrick Morrissey Quotes

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 was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

I'm probably one of the few authors in this country who could very comfortably live off my writing.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.

You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.

I published my first poem in 'The Paris Review' in 1980.

When I started earning money from screen-writing, for a long time my only indulgences were books.

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 tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

Which, of course, isn't the point of writing - but it would be nice if, along with the creative satisfaction of writing and seeing my work in print, I could do more than merely scrape a living. Okay, moaning over.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

I'm a successful novelist, and I've been a lucky one, so I don't want to cry the poor mouth. Writing has never been easy.

The comforts come from my movie and television writing. It is unusual to live this well simply from books.

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.

For every Steven King, there are a dozen guys like me who make a good living. For every David Brin, there are a dozen authors who have managed to make it their day job. For each of them, there are a dozen more for whom writing is a terrific supplement.