John Niven Quotes

I love getting up in the morning with nothing else to do except write.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

It really was total heaven to be a writer. As a model or actor you are employed on someone's whim. As a writer, you are in control.

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.

The great thing about being a novelist is that you organize your own day.

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

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

As for writing novels - it's what I've done for 30 some-odd years. I can't suddenly say I'm going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I'll keep at it.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.

If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.

As a writer of both novels and screenplays, I can say that screenwriting is a vastly rewarding creative life - if you fight hard enough to do it on your own terms. Whether I write books or not, my screenwriting life has been creatively rewarding and remains so.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Being an author is fun. It's a great job, because I can stay up as late as I want, and if I feel like taking the day off, I do it. Plus, I get to make up silly stories and draw pictures all day.

It's hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it.

Screenwriting and the movie stuff could all disappear tomorrow, but to sit down with my laptop and still tell stories is my day job. I didn't believe I'd actually get to do it for a living.

I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.

'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write.

Writers don't retire. I will always be a writer.

When I was really young, Dad wasn't that well known. I don't remember when I realised he was a writer, but I do remember him leaving his full-time job at the Central Electrical Generating Board to concentrate on books.

The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.