Patti Smith Quotes

I didn't have a burning desire to be a writer or director - writer probably more so, certainly not a director.

For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

I've wanted to be an author as long as I can remember. English was always my favorite subject at school, so why I went on to do a degree in French is anyone's guess.

It never occurred to me when I was young that I could be an author. That would be like saying, "I want to be a movie star" or "I want to be a wizard." I didn't have any concept of what that path would look like. Maybe that's why I didn't publish my first book until I was 38.

Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer.

I first tried a novel when I was 14. First finished one when I was 16. First started working on stuff that had a chance of being salable in my early 20s, then didn't write much fiction at all because I was in grad school.

I always wanted to be a writer since I was around 12 years old and I wrote my first book.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

I wanted to write a novel. At 12 I knew, I am a writer. I said it to nobody.

Something in me was instinctively drawn to the life of a misunderstood, brilliant and wilful artist. I wanted to become one.

From age 7 on, I wanted to be a writer.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.

I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me.

I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable.

It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.

I will try to keep going as long as I can. I'd love to play until the age of 40 - it will be interesting to see if I can do that.

I could have been a writer.

I actually thought I wanted to be Thomas Wolfe, but I didn't have the talent. So I thought I could edit Thomas Wolfe.

I had liver disease. I'm completely cured now, but I thought about if I died from liver cancer, what my life would look like. I followed this wish of being a fiction writer.

I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer.