Wislawa Szymborska Quotes

I earn more than I thought I would when I became a poet.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

I published my first poem in 'The Paris Review' in 1980.

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it.

I'd never been published when I was young.

I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable.

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

Poets are supposed to be underappreciated, don't you know? There is always a strange reaction to those who become successful in their own lifetime, and so I always felt lucky that I made the living I did out of it.

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

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.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

At 18, my first short story was published - I was paid a penny a word by a science fiction magazine. I continued to write, and five years later I published my first novel, 'Sweetwater.'

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.

I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents.

But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.

I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.

Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel.