Taiye Selasi Quotes

I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid.

When I was young, I wrote everything, and I thought I would be an all around writer, that I would write everything.

I'm one of those sad cases who've never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing my first novel when I was five years old. I have no idea what it was about, but I do remember spending considerable time trying to get the title right, though this had more to do with crayon colour than scansion.

When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.

I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.

I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.

I wrote my first book at 20, but my whole focus from about the age of 12 was to be a writer.

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.

I had a vision of myself as a novelist because that was where I could be serious. I couldn't with music.

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 think my parents recognised that I'd always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn't think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I've been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

I want a career writing these novels that I can be proud of. And then I want one as a screenwriter.

I always knew that I was going to be a writer. There was no question in my mind about that.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.

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

I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would be an artist or novelist when I grew up, I would have laughed in your face.

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

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

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

I told my parents when I was 12 I'd be a writer.

I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of.

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.

I wanted to be a novelist for so long.