Jose James Quotes

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

I've always wanted to write a novel. It's overwhelming and daunting, and it's one of those things that every writer fantasizes about doing.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.

For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life.

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I don't think I knew I would be a writer. I wanted to become a writer, and I tried to write.

With this first novel, I am just above the foothills, but I see the path to the top, and it is my desire to write compelling stories about everything that I find of interest.

Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.

I wish I had more time to write.

There may well be writers who roll up their sleeves and say, 'I'm going to write a post-9/11 novel' but I wasn't one of those.

I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

I think 'Hollow City' only took a year and a half to write... but it felt like two and a half!

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

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.

All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.