John Darnielle Quotes

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

I took my first creative writing class when I was 24, then went onto to get a graduate degree in poetry. I've sort of never looked back from there.

I always wanted to write. But honestly I'm glad I didn't do it back when I was twenty-five or so, when it's now clear to me that I was a very poor writer and could've ruined my career before it even started.

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

You don't know who you are when you're 14.

I lived in Boston for three years, and during that time, I wrote my first collection of stories, 'What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us;' other stories that didn't make it into the collection; and several failed novel openings.

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

I wanted to get better at writing, so I knew I needed to move to Nashville.

I was a history major, but that was because it took the fewest requirements of any major. In my sophomore year, I started getting back into making movies. My senior year, I took playwriting classes, and I feel like that's where I learned to be a writer.

Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system.

I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.

I started writing for myself because I know how to write for myself. I know how to show what I can do.

I was writing lyrics since I was nine years old, so by age 15, I was feeling pretty confident about my talent.

I'm finding writing very fascinating.

I've realised that my strength is writing around people.

I'm, like, finishing up high school. I don't know how you can learn anything from me because I'm still, like, a teenager. I don't know what I'm doing with my life.

A lot of people ask me, did debating help me as a writer, and I honestly don't know.

I really wanted to be a poet - until I realized that I really didn't have what it took to be a poet.

I think as a writer, as an artist, I've grown a lot.

I was a terrible writer at first.

Hopefully I'm learning a lesson from every new thing I write, whether it features guys in spandex or not.

I guess I feel it's funny to be looked to for advice on writing when I am still taking in so much from other people.

When we're growing up and being teenagers, oftentimes you try so hard to define yourself. You try to create an image of yourself because you don't really know who you are yet. And that can be kind of limiting because you forget that there are actually so many different sides of identity. And it's important to recognize that everyone is completely different.

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.

The search for a personal identity is the life task of a teenager.