Garth Nix Quotes

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've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.

I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually, ultimately, I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.

I had no idea I'd end up writing four books when I completed 'Mortal Engines.' I didn't even think it would find a publisher.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.

When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.

Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break?

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.

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.

It was always my dream to write for a living.

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

I worked in the book publishing business for nearly two decades before I turned my attention to writing, first with a couple ghostwriting projects, plus a crappy novel that absolutely no one wanted to publish. Then I moved to Luxembourg for my wife's job and found the inspiration for 'The Expats.'

I wanted to be a writer and I ended up being a writer.

I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."

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.

For most of my life - well, maybe half of my life, but basically until I was in my mid-20s - I wrote stories. From the time I was 5 or 6 until I was 25. And I read a lot of stories during that time.

As I see it, my job has always been to champion the work of the authors I publish.

I started out as a writer of fiction, but nobody wanted to publish my work as a young man. So I decided to put my interest in the narrative writing of biographies.

I was not especially a writer back in college.

I'm fortunate in having journalism as a sideline to pay the bills, and I essentially do it in order to take as long as I want with books.

I never set out to be a published writer.