Paulo Coelho Quotes

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

My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.

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.

From age 7 on, I wanted to be a writer.

I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.

I'm a successful novelist, and I've been a lucky one, so I don't want to cry the poor mouth. Writing has never been easy.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.

I wrote my first book at 20, but my whole focus from about the age of 12 was to be a writer.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

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.

I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

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.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

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

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that.

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.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

When I was young, I wrote everything, and I thought I would be an all around writer, that I would write everything.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old!

I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.