Successful Writer Quotes

When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff - poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity.

One tends to overlook the fact that all during the 30's and actually during the late 40's I was a highly successful writer and a great many properties accumulated during that period of time.

I made a very good living as a bad writer. I wrote a lot of comedies, 'Diff'rent Strokes,' 'Facts of Life,' while all my friends were doing the good shows, like 'Cheers,' but I loved it because I got to be a working writer in Hollywood.

She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.

Literature nowadays is a trade... the successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening.

I always grew up with the idea that in order to be a successful writer, I should have a book published.

If you're really a good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read, and you'll be produced somehow. It just works that way. If you're just a simple ordinary day-to-day craftsman, no different than most, then the likelihood is that you probably won't make it in writing.

The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.

I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did 'Reno 911!' for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the 'Star Trek' thing.

Acquiring an aggressive, honest, and communicative agent with actual relationships in real-live New York publishing houses is, in my opinion, the single most important move that a writer who aspires to be successful can make.

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

It always seemed much better to be a writer - a Real Writer - than a successful hack.

If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a success. I don't care if you're writing textbooks or Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for weighty publications of world renown: If you're writing and it's paying the bills, consider yourself a successful writer.