Emma Donoghue Quotes

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.

The idea that you could make a living from writing always thrilled me.

I've had a few jobs, but if you want to be a writer, you're better off getting a job that doesn't require that you do anything.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

If you're going to write for a living, you should find something fun to write.

To be a working writer is the holy grail, where you don't have three other jobs on top of that.

I may not have become a good writer, but I managed to make a living out of writing.

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.