Peter De Vries Quotes

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

I love being a writer. I have a great life. I get up in the morning and pad around in my dressing gown and listen to Radio 4.

I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.

In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was.

I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

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.

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it.

If you want to become a writer, you do need to be willing to make sacrifices.

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.

I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity.

Just being able to get paid to do something you love is a wonderful thing. That said, a writer's daily routine, unless you're Dominick Dunne, isn't exactly glamorous. Much of it amounts to drudgery, staring at a computer screen all day in a room by yourself, juggling nouns and verbs to make a demanding editor happy.

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

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.

'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 had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

One of the best parts of being a writer means that researching all kinds of cool stuff actually counts as work!

I love being able to be a writer. That's what I moved to New York to be.

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.

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.

The writer's curse is that the more you fall in love with the work you're doing, the more I think it shows.

I have a strong work ethic, yet I'm incredibly lazy as well. The problem with being a writer is that everything you do can be called research. Sitting in the pub is research. Reading the newspaper can be research.

It was always my dream to write for a living.