Anna Quindlen Quotes

...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

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

For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.

To be able to create a character and tell a story is a crazy way to make a living. I feel so lucky to be able to do this.

I think it's hard to make a living as a writer, but I think it's hard to work at McDonald's too.... I think the commitment is to get up everyday and say, "I'm a writer, therefore what I'm supposed to do today is write." And to do that, and to do that and to do that.

I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

I went to college to study hospitality. I quickly got out of that and realized that what I liked to do was write.

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks - chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

The definition of a writing career, is write a book, write another book, write another book

I spend most of my time writing.

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it. I went to business school because in the '80, it was the thing to do. I thought that marketing was a way to be creative in business, but quickly learned all creative stuff happens at the ad agency.

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

I definitely think of myself still as a writer first, and feel like - with the lucky exception of this - any acting opportunity I've gotten is usually because I was writing on it. This is like a wonderful vacation. If you've ever sat in a writers' room it's the most disgusting, tortuous place, so it's a treat to be treated like a movie actor.

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

I did not think of writing as a career and I don't think that I did this ever really, but I think of writing as something that I could do, I should do alongside whatever else I was doing. It simply grew on me.

I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever.