authorial aspirations Quotes

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

I dreamed of becoming a writer. And this dream is about to become a reality with the publication of my first, and hopefully not my last, children's book.

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.

[My mom] had always wanted to write a children's book. She was a children's librarian and an elementary school teacher, so of course she loves children and children's literature.

As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

I wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.

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

I want to be a writer, not an engineer who writes books.

I guess I've always been an aspiring novelist. I went to Princeton and wrote a novel for my thesis.

When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.