Peter Ackroyd Quotes

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

I was always interested in writing from an early age, but it seemed so far away and inconceivable, like wanting to be an astronaut or a pop star.

I always had a passion to write as a young girl.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

I wanted to write a novel. At 12 I knew, I am a writer. I said it to nobody.

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that.

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.

I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

With this first novel, I am just above the foothills, but I see the path to the top, and it is my desire to write compelling stories about everything that I find of interest.

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

Every 'Observer' writer wants to be a novelist.

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.

All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.