Douglas Kennedy Quotes

If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 - I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.

I'm a fairly ordinary person - a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!

When I was about 14 or 15 I decided to become a writer and never for a moment since have I wanted to do anything else.

What's important about me is that I really have, in ways I never could have foreseen when I was young, a writing career that's reached a lot of different places.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream.

I got into writing in college... well, in elementary school. But in college, I started writing seriously and had a professor who read my writing and gave me permission to pursue that as a real effort and time-consuming effort.

When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I never wanted to be anything but a writer, and I never let go of it.

I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of.

I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child.

I wrote six nonfiction books before getting into narrative fiction with 'Robopocalypse,' including 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising.' My goal all along was to start writing fiction, and I guess one day I'd just had enough.

Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.

I wanted to be a writer and I ended up being a writer.

Hopefully, if I get enough of a fan army together, people will let me write fiction.

I've always wanted to be a writer ever since I was in kindergarten, so that was ultimately what I wanted to do with my life.

Writing is such a 'pretend' profession. Nobody is counting on you at all. You can't 'pretend' to be a lawyer or a teacher. It takes a lot of grit to continue.

I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

I've written since I was 10 years old, so I guess I'm self-taught. I've had some luck along the way, I must admit, and I've worked hard.