Ben Fountain Quotes

I'd probably still be a financial journalist now if it weren't for writing novels. Mmm. Fun! I'm much happier writing novels!

I didn't leave Wall Street because the work was against my nature - I do have a pretty good head for numbers. I left because I had this love for writing.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

Well I could have been just a writer. I had been a hair dresser. I could have stuck with that.

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to.

Well, I liked it - that was the main thing. I liked it, but I didn't think of it in terms of a career. I didn't really know; I didn't really think about it. One thing just led to another until finally I quit my job as a salesman and found myself working as a photographer.

If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot...I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.

I did the 'right' thing and got a corporate job on Wall Street. That did not last long. I felt like I was throwing all my years of hard work and relationship-building down the toilet. I eventually quit, went and bought a camera, and built a website. That was the birth of KarenCivil.com.

What I really, really love is writing. If I can just write and make a really nice living out of that, why would I change that?

Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more.

I knew I'd never have the career Colin Farrell had. I was working in stuff that was, for me, not very challenging. My career wasn't going as well as I wanted it to. So I turned to writing because I felt like I had more to say, and I started writing every day.

When I was doing engineering, one day I thought that I want to be an actor, and apart from acting, I want to produce also.

I'll never forget the day I went home and told my wife, 'I'll never be a kindergarten teacher.'

When I graduated from UCLA, I actually started interviewing for banking jobs. But at some point I realized a career in banking felt more like a continuation of school than a passion.

I went to drama school but soon realised I was terrible at acting, so I ditched drama school for art school.

I had been laughed at my whole life through school, and I never really thought of it as a vocation. I mean, I started off as a soldier, and then I went into the university thinking I was going to be a journalist, but comedy kind of fell on my head and demanded I pursue it.

I worked in finance for 14 years, and I loved it. But after the financial industry, I thought a lot about, 'Do I love what I'm doing?'

When I came back to Hong Kong in 1992, I decided to pursue a new career challenge.

I don't think when I decided I didn't want to be an accountant any more that I was necessarily saying I wanted to be an NBA head coach. I just really wanted to figure out if I could do it.

The goal was for me to become a civil engineer. But one day I really felt that it was important for me to do what I really loved. I was really good at engineering, but I didn't have a passion for it, so going to work was something I had to do, not something that I really wanted to do.

It's just a freak of fate that I'm paid to write, not paying to print my own books - but I'd be doing it anyway: it's my life.

I really don't have a specific idea of where I want my career to go, I just have an idea of wanting to continue to work and work on things that I like and think are good.

I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I didn't know what would happen to me.