Tea Obreht Quotes

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

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

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.

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.

I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

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.

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

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was 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.

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

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

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.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

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

I always knew I wanted to be a writer.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

I was always a keen reader. I jotted down one or two things, but it never occurred to me to think of a job in writing. I thought that writers were like demi-gods. I don't know what I thought.

I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.