Paul Engle Quotes

Young writers take themselves very seriously in college.

Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

I just believe that young people need to be able to learn how to write in their own voice. Just like a musician, you pride yourself on having your own distinct sound.

I had a vision of myself as a novelist because that was where I could be serious. I couldn't with music.

I've never been a model, I was an actress for like a minute, but I've always been a writer. That's where I'm going to stay.

Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

Once I began college, I was committed to writing, which I think is different from saying I wanted to become a writer. I knew I would always write; I just wasn't always sure how I would go about doing so.

It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books.

Young writers need to be encouraged to write - just write - with no restrictions on form, style or content.

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

I feel very connected to poets across the country.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

When I started writing, it felt good, and I knew I was in the right genre.

I always thought that I was a terrible writer. And I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role because, of course, it's really not me.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

I never, ever talk about writing to anyone at all.

It's my belief that I was a writer - a very hardworking writer - well before I was published. I did care what others thought, and it was embarrassing when people asked me what I had published, so I didn't talk much about writing; rather, I just kept writing.

Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer.

Pittsburgh was the first chance to be in a classroom with other writers, to have conversations with other writers. In fact, after graduate school, I lived in Japan, Ohio and New Orleans, and only upon leaving Pittsburgh did I see what a special community it was for poets, so I was eager to come back. It's a strong arts community across the board.

Drag is involved with changing identities and not taking identities too seriously at all. That's why drag is such a hard sell to a network - or anyone, really - because it's up against the ego.