Lee Child Quotes

If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for?

It always seemed much better to be a writer - a Real Writer - than a successful hack.

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

Start writing the things that you are reading or that you want to be published doing.

I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

I never bought the excuse of not having time to write. If you really want to do it, you're either going to find those hours or eventually decide not to be a writer.

I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.

I also believe that if you're really a writer, you'll write, and that nobody could stop you.

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

Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

The only time I was ever approached to write a book was when I was most famous.

Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.

In the summer of 1791, I gave up my concern in the 'New Annual Register,' the historical part of which I had written for seven years, and abdicated, I hope forever, the task of performing a literary labour, the nature of which should be dictated by anything but the promptings of my own mind.

I don't read my own books, but sometimes if there is a new edition I open it and then I feel this life of a writer was not so hopeless, not so bad.

As I see it, my job has always been to champion the work of the authors I publish.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

I've been approached for views about doing a book, but I never wrapped my head around it in terms of, where does it end? I suppose, after being inducted into the Hall of Fame, that gave me a second thought.

In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was.

I never set out to be a published writer.