Nicholas Sparks Quotes

I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

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

I completed my first novel when I was 19 years old.

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.

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

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.

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.

By the time I was in fifth grade, I was dreaming of the Pulitzer Prize.

I never set out to be a published writer.

There is no doubt that Michael Symmons Roberts is a very good poet - you don't win a Whitbread award and get shortlisted for a TS Eliot prize for nothing. Few poets, though, have ever been good novelists, and vice-versa.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.

I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the National Endowment for the Arts.

It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel.

I used my NEA fellowship to write my novel, 'In Country,' which was published by Harper & Row in 1985.

I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.

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.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.

You don't market-research a novel; you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism. You just don't listen to it.