Jami Attenberg Quotes

I'm one of those sad cases who've never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing my first novel when I was five years old. I have no idea what it was about, but I do remember spending considerable time trying to get the title right, though this had more to do with crayon colour than scansion.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

I never started writing because I wanted to write myself stuff. It was really more that I had these stories to tell, and I wanted to work with people that I respected and liked.

I've been a writer longer than I've been an actor. I wrote short stories like crazy when I was in high school and college. I worked in advertising before I moved to L.A. to pursue acting.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.

I've been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

I was as eager a writer as I was a reader.

It's just a freak of fate that I'm paid to write, not paying to print my own books - but I'd be doing it anyway: it's my life.

The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.

Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion.

From when I was a kid I wanted to write. It was so important to me that I was writing my own material.

When people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always WAS a writer.

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

I always want to challenge myself as a writer. I consider myself more of a writer than I do a director.

I started writing stories when I was 9 or 10. I wrote my first screenplay-type document when I was 14.

For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life.

I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.

I started writing seriously when I was about 12. I am always in the mood.