Lucy Hawking Quotes

Since I can't write the greatest American novel, I'm going to write the longest American novel.

I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

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.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.

I try to read writers who are better than me because it inspires me to be better.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

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

It's one thing you aspire to: someday, you'll be able to write a book.

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.

I never wanted to be anything but a writer, and I never let go of it.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.

I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!

I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child.

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

I felt like I was never going to be a great writer. I felt like I was going to be a good writer at best. I wanted to be great at something.

Didn't you know I'm going to be the greatest, most entertaining author and artist in the world? Well, don't feel badly, I didn't either!

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 read 'The First Bad Man' by Miranda July, and I just thought, 'Oh my God, I'll never be this good. That book is so incredible.'