J. K. Rowling Quotes

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

I've been writing since I was six years old. It's hard to imagine stopping. I would hate to think that I've already written my best book.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

For anyone who is: just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it'll work itself out. You just keep feeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

I never thought I'd be a person who would want to write books...I promise you not a single English teacher I've ever had would have thought that this would be going on right now.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.

I would say [I love] writing, because lately I've been finishing my book.

I never imagined I'd write a book.

Writing a book is hard. It turns out, writing a second book is twice as hard.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

I love to read. I remember hearing that the average author takes two years to write a book. So when I read a book, I feel like I am getting two years of life experiences.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

I'll probably be writing as long as I'm breathing.

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write.

The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.