Pearl S. Buck Quotes

I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.

In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

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.

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

I didn't think [Ella Enchanted] would get published. Everything I'd written till then had been rejected. If it was published, I thought it might sell a few thousand copies and go out of print. I thought if I was lucky I could write more books and get them published, too. I still pinch myself over the way things have worked out.

Somebody said, 'Hey, there is a lull in your career. Why don't you write books about your [dyslexia]?' We are currently writing our 34th novel.

If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

I started doing '30 Rock' and started writing 'Mystery Team' at the beginning of that. While I was doing 'Mystery Team,' I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got 'Community.' It's like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit.

Life changed at 40 for me, as predicted by my acting teacher when I was leaving college. I became more hirable and more interesting... I'm not sure why.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

I was definitely meant to be a young adult author, and I love it - I'm here to stay!

I never thought my ideas would actually get published.

Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

If someone had told me in high school that one day I'd write an historical novel, I would have rolled my eyes.

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

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.

But I was ready for it and I knew I could do it. I've just turned 40, I have a son and I feel more settled and driven than ever. I think my 40s will be my most prolific time. It's a very rare life you get to lead as a sitcom guy.

I never thought I would become amazing. I never thought I would be as great as my father. I would like to continue writing novels, and hopefully, at some point, I would like to make the switch from being 'Stephen Hawking's daughter' to 'novelist Lucy Hawking,' and that will be a fabulous day.

When I realized I wanted to do more writing and less traveling around the world teaching live seminars, I decided to write the first 'Chicken Soup for the Soul(R)' book. I knew I wanted to have 100 stories in the book, so I wrote or edited two stories a week for a year.

It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering!

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.