Andrew Sean Greer Quotes

I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

I'm surviving and developing as a writer. I don't know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I'll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.

I had been writing professionally since 1988.

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

I've been writing full-time since 1978.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

I took my first creative writing class when I was 24, then went onto to get a graduate degree in poetry. I've sort of never looked back from there.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

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.

Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?'

I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.

I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.

My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.

I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children.

When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.

I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.