John Cooper Clarke Quotes

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

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.

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

I always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.

Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.

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

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.

My parents did not discourage me but could not understand how I could make a living by art. Their idea of an artist was a person who was condemned to starvation.

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.

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.

There came a point when I was thinking, 'I'm now 26, 27, working on music every day, but I'm not making, like, a lot of money. What's happening? I guess I'll just start making dog clothes.'

I wanted to be a poet. I wrote from ages 15 to 22, but I left it because I discovered, and fell in love with, cinema.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

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

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

I had written children's books for 14 years before I published 'Wicked.' And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.