Michael Chabon Quotes

It's nice to have awards from time to time. There was a time when I had to make a living from my writing, and it wasn't always easy. I value awards a lot - and more so if there is a little cash with them!

Pretty much everybody we know in Glasgow who's in a band has another job. All of us have worked in bars, cafes, or cinemas. It means you can afford to do the thing you love.

I know there are going to be big challenges financially, but I'm excited artistically. I think that if the experience is better artistically, then we have more hope in the future.

Now, although my life is still pleasant, the days of easy money are over.

It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble.

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do, and actually failed.

But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.

Nobody will be worse off financially.

Being rich would be disastrous for me as a writer. I have always needed to write to pay the bills.

At the start, you don't earn a great deal, so you have to work other jobs if you want to play football. When I was at Doncaster, I couldn't solely do football. I had to work; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to live.

The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It's terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness.

I'm fortunate in having journalism as a sideline to pay the bills, and I essentially do it in order to take as long as I want with books.

I was lucky in that I didn't have to do too many outside-of-acting side jobs.

After graduating from National School of Drama, I started doing theatre in Delhi. But there was not much money in Hindi theatre.

I get income, but I don't have a big swath of money to invest in things.

I have done a lot of television serials in order to make ends meet.

You cannot make a living doing independent films.

Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the day fresh, get rid of your wife.

A novel may take anywhere from two to five years to write and, in the end, you might manage a couple of thousand dollars on it, no more.

It's very important to be able to act properly. You need financing, and you never have enough.

ACID Kreationz was founded in 2008. I formed this business with the purpose of paying my university tuition because my teaching salary would not be able to cover school payments.

I had a very high opinion of my father's judgement of things and he said, "You better get a job that pays the bills because a writer doesn't make any money. If possible, get a job that allows you to write in your spare time."

The first thing a writer has to do is find another source of income. Then, after you have begged, borrowed, stolen or saved up the money to give you time to write and you spend all of it staying alive while you write, and you write your heart out, after all that, maybe no one will publish it, and if they publish it, maybe no one will read it. That is the hard truth, that is what it means to be a writer.