Thomas Haden Church Quotes

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.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.

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 just always written, and always considered myself a writer. I wrote my first story when I was five. There was nothing else I wanted to do or be.

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

I always want to challenge myself as a writer. I consider myself more of a writer than I do a director.

I always wrote. I've written stories since I was 9. We didn't have a computer at home, but my aunt Magda had one. Whenever I'd go to her place, I was in the basement working on her computer, writing stories.

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.

By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

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've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

I was not especially a writer back in college.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.

Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.

I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on a novel. My third novel, in fact.

I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

I don't know when I made that active decision to be a writer or to try to write, but I know I always liked storytelling.

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.

I'd like to ghost-write Liz Phair's novel. But I don't really know about that. It seems like a dignified thing to segue into as I approach the other side of 45. My hands are just full right now. There's the potential to try to write some kind of biography of Pavement - sort of a cryptic, nonfiction/fiction blowout. The story's never been told well. But that's a lot of inward-gazing that I'm not sure I want to do. I like to look out.

I want to go to college for literature. I want to be a writer. I mean, I love what I do, but its not all I want to do-be a professional liar for the rest of my life.

For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life.

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.