Jim Butcher Quotes

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

I've always been ambidextrous, writing short stories and novels, and I pretty much have been writing a novel and a handful of short stories every year since '91.

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

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.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever - was write novels.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

I had always secretly wanted to write a novel.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I've only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I've written all of them.

It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel.

I never thought I would grow up writing a book.

Honestly, I never dreamed of being a writer; it felt too unrealistic to even dream about.

My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.

I tried almost every genre. I decided at 14 I wanted to be a writer. I think I had to wait until they invented word processors to get serious about it, but I really tried every genre, and fantasy was the one that gave me the scope to do the most... you could play with worlds more.

I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old!

I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They're equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both.