Shane Black Quotes

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

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

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

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

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.

At first, teaching was more or less a straightforward way of making a living and having access to institutional resources while writing - aka libraries. And that was not inconsiderable. But it didn't in any way touch the writing. Maybe it would push the writing aside sometimes, but mostly it was fine.

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.

I actually was doing ghostwriting jobs since I was 17 years old, so I've been supporting myself off and on with writing jobs for almost 10 years. But those were all things that I did off the books. And now I do a lot more writing on the books.

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

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.

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.