Elizabeth Berg Quotes

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

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

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.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

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

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

I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

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

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

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

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.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

Writing doesn't leave much time for hobbies, unless you consider that I began writing as a hobby and have made the hobby into a profession.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

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

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

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.

I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looking back.