Bruce Cameron Quotes

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've known since I was 12 that I wanted to write. My father was a teacher, and there were so many books around, it seemed natural to pick them up.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

The idea that you could make a living from writing always thrilled me.

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

This is a privilege, what we get to do. To be able to tell stories. It's a luxury. So I have a business-like approach to it, the same way I had with football.

Telling stories has been a compulsion of mine since I could physically say, 'Once upon a time...' But in high school, I realized I could study creative writing in college and actually pursue it as a viable career.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.'

I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted.

I write and have done so primarily for personal pleasure.

If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills.

If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills. Clearly I'm not meant to do anything else.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

I have a father who was the first black student at his junior high and high school and had to do a lot to get to that point.

I write the books to amuse myself.

My mom never went to college, so she just assumed the writer identity, and that was always really inspiring to me. It's not something you need nine levels of education for. It's really an identity that you claim for yourself, and then you have to make yourself one.

In the family, writing wasn't anything anyone understood - being a writer in the real world? How could it be? We didn't have those mirrors.

I never want kids to walk away after a school presentation and say, 'I met a writer today.' I want them to say, 'I am a writer.'

To be a working writer is the holy grail, where you don't have three other jobs on top of that.