James Frey Quotes

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

As much as writing is an emotional experience, it is a business as well. Coming from a business background, I treat it as such.

I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it. I can't believe it when writers tell me 'I don't want to show my work to anybody'.

I've had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

I'm not going to write for posterity. I'm going to write to make a buck.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

I'm pursuing film and TV, and it's exciting because I feel I can write in almost any genre now.

I always say I want to eventually shift my career to directing and writing.

I definitely want to act and I want to sing. If those two fall through, I want to become a writer, probably, like a songwriter for other people, or a novel writer. I write a lot, and I read a lot. I like reading fiction.

I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.

I didn't write 'Snow White' for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.

When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

There's a personal story of my own that I will write at some point, and it's a film that I will happily make. It could very well be the next thing I do, unless someone shows me something great.

I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

I was always told you're not going to make much money from writing. You can actually do it. Now I've built a really good, big house out of words.