Alice McDermott Quotes

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.

Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

After 'A Suitable Boy,' I didn't write anything, not even a short story. I thought to myself: 'I ought to start writing.' But I can never force myself to write.

The only strategy I know of is to write every day, which I don't always do, because sometimes I just can't, for various reasons that seem out of my control.

I've always been a writer. I hope to continue to write books until I can't anymore.

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

I now have to find a reason to write, every single day.

I'm way into writing, as much as I can.

Read as much as possible, especially the work of writers who most deeply affect you. Make those writers your family. Never wait for inspiration to strike before getting to work; be disciplined and form the habit of writing every day.

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

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

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

I make time to write.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

I love getting up in the morning with nothing else to do except write.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I've done that my whole life.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.

I write, I write, I always write.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.