Daniel Woodrell Quotes

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

I'm very proud of 'Gavin and Stacey,' but I think I have to write something else even to start to consider myself a writer. Just because you do something once, it doesn't mean that's who you are. I played football last night; it doesn't mean I'm a footballer.

I didn't think I was an actor and fought it for a long time. Nobody paid for that but me.

In my twenties, I was a bit of a worrier; it bothered me what people thought of me, what job I was doing.

There's never been a game plan, and I suppose I've had an uneasy relationship with my ambition. Someone who had been in my year at drama school once said to me that I was terrifyingly ambitious back then. Which was not at all what I felt at the time - I felt paralysed with shyness, though that evaporated.

I just feel really fortunate to build a career as a writer.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.

I was a waitress for nine years, which I don't regret at all. It taught me about discipline. I was always writing; it took a long time to make a career of it.

There were times when I wondered if I was doing the right thing, studying when I could have been going to auditions.

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

I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

In college, I had a lot of friends who were writers and wanted to be writers and I felt intimidated by it. I just didn't know if I had any gift or voice and I had no confidence about it.

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 am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

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

Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

I didn't have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.