Jess Walter Quotes

I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.

Sometime around 2006, I decided I had missed my true calling as a young adult author.

My career is an open book, but my life is not.

People don't really know themselves until they're 30. Like most people nowadays, I went to university, got a degree and wandered for a bit. I trained to be a chartered accountant, which I didn't much enjoy, and it was only slowly that the idea of becoming a creative writer gelled.

I left school at 16 and skipped university to work, initially as a waiter. I think I missed out on what would have been great years.

I am 74 now. Looking back, I have a sense of not really being in control of my career. I just went where it took me.

Having a family has made a huge difference in the roles I take, so doing a show in L.A. is a huge factor.

I did say that I wanted to be a young mom, just because my mom was a young mom. It is better because I can be closer to my kids and stuff.

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.

I went straight from high school to 'Gossip Girl,' and both were very structured, scheduled environments, so I never had freedom to explore and carve my own path.

With due apologies to Shakespeare, some people are born writers, some people achieve it after a lot of hard work, some people have a writing career thrust upon them. I am in that last group.

I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment.

I chose to have a career, and I enjoyed it while I had it.

I'm proud to be Secretary of Labor. But I'm even prouder of two more important titles: dad and husband. I've been able to be all three. I want all working people, no matter what their jobs are, to be able to meet their obligations both at work and at home.

I love making movies, but I was ready to rationalize being only a mother if my career never got back on track.

There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want a normal life, you might reverse the process.

And I discovered after a couple years that I really didn't miss making movies.

When I was 23 and about to go to law school, I thought I'd spend the summer writing a novel.

Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?'

I wish I could have skipped college.

'Wings' offered me the rare opportunity to be a full-time dad and a working actor for eight years.

If I hadn't gone to Stanford, I'd be working at P&G now.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end.

I wanted to be a painter when I was a kid. And then, I had to make a living. I had a child when I was in high school, so I kind of had that work phase in my life.

I started a novel right before 'The Imitation Game,' so it's funny now, four years later, to be coming almost back to finishing it.