Carole Radziwill Quotes

To have been able to write the books I wanted to write, on demanding subjects like war and the history of psychiatry, and for them to have sold in the numbers they have - and then go around saying: 'Actually, I'd also like to have won the Costa Book of the Year?' That would be ridiculous.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

If you want to become a writer, you do need to be willing to make sacrifices.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.

Dreamers become writers, and for me, being a published writer is a dream come true.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.

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.

If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.

It was always my dream to write for a living.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

I never set out to be a published writer.

I wanted to be a writer and I ended up being a writer.

At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.

I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.

Every 'Observer' writer wants to be a novelist.

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.

When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.

I had a vision of myself as a novelist because that was where I could be serious. I couldn't with music.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream.