Kanika Dhillon Quotes

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

I do write, but for now I am keeping it all in the desk drawer. I have always written. The only book that I have published was "Revolution," during the election campaign, a book that contains both personal and political chapters. I have never been happy with what I have written, including three novels that, from my point of view, are incomplete.

I'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

I wrote 'Time Stops at Shamli' in 1956, shortly after 'The Room on the Roof' was published, and I couldn't find anyone to publish it.

I actually thought I wanted to be Thomas Wolfe, but I didn't have the talent. So I thought I could edit Thomas Wolfe.

Eventually, I just want to write wavy little short stories.

I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.

I've been writing fiction since I was a kid. From the age of 15 to 25, I probably wrote more than 50 short stories, one of which was published in 'The Paris Review' in 1989.

I'd done occasional short stories, but I don't like publishing them in literary magazines; they treat you too much like college boys.

I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.

I've been writing since I was six years old. It's hard to imagine stopping. I would hate to think that I've already written my best book.

I love writing. I love to write, and I would eventually love to have some of my work produced.

I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.

I've just always written, and always considered myself a writer. I wrote my first story when I was five. There was nothing else I wanted to do or be.

I took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story "Bactine." It pleased me a lot more than anything else I'd ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I'd written maybe eight stories.

Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

Aha! Today I shall become an author! And I will auth and auth and auth and make a squillion dollars, whoopee!

Sinclair Lewis was asked one time to give a talk to class of students about writing. When he got there he asked the class, Do you people want to be writers?and they all said yes. Then Lewis said, Why the hell aren't you at home writing?

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.

I've always been a writer, actually. Not many people assume that, but I kinda keep quiet about anything that I do until I'm ready to show it. It keeps me humble and also makes me work towards a goal.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!