Antony Beevor Quotes

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

Writing was something I always liked, but it wasn't a career until I was laid off from my executive position in my 30s. I started a website because I was bored, unemployed and angry.

Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.

Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I'm a fairly ordinary person - a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!

I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13, and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays, and I was bored, and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself instead of asking, 'What can I do, mum? Entertain me.' I started, and it really just took over, and I realised, 'Wow, this is an amazing experience.'

The reason I started writing movies was because I kept getting parts that I just kind of stepped into. I didn't have to do a lot of work and I ended up getting sort of bored.

I was planning to stay in the Army all my life, but I ended up being posted to a training camp in Wales and was so bored there, I wrote a novel.

It's not as though I decided to sit down and write a mystery novel so I could capitalize on my parents' success.

My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.

All my writer friends outline their books, and I find that hard. It doesn't feel inspired to me. I get bored with that, and really, I just want it to be fun.

If I truly had the courage of my convictions, I would be a full-blown comic novelist.

I became a writer because I got addicted to story. The first storyteller in my life was my father.

I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist.

I remember how I would wait for a play idea. I wasted a tremendous amount of time. I didn't realize that ideas could be made into movies or novels.

I don't want to write because I have to; I want to write because I want to. Sometimes, when writers write because they have to, the results are disastrous.

I would like to one day write a nice big novel and enjoy writing it and people enjoy reading it but I cannae be bothered or I don't have any ideas that would fill up a big book like that.

I write when I get bored, when I have nothing to do.

I worked in videogames for 16 years before writing my first book in 2009.

I just used to make up stories for the kids at bedtime and my wife goes, 'you should start putting that stuff down.' It's such a joy to do.

If you want to write, just believe that you can, because it's about perseverance.

A lot of times, I get what I want to write while I'm driving. I love listening to music in the car, perhaps because of my dad - that's all he does.