James Altucher Quotes

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

I was very much a late bloomer. That's not to say that girls didn't express interest in me from time to time, but I just, I did not know how to respond to that.

In my sophomore year, a kid told me that the secret to getting women is to play really, really hard to get. I followed his advice, and I didn't have so much as a date that year.

I was desperately shy when I was wee. Totally lacked confidence socially. When I look back at school photographs, I'm always the one shrinking in the back. What I really wanted to do was become a writer, and I don't think the residue of that has ever gone away. I still feel the ultimate achievement would be to write a novel.

My forays into trying to date girls my own age from the school I went to were all pretty tortured.

Sometimes I have a tough time getting along with myself. When I was a child, I needed a lot of attention... and I don't have a small ego. For me, appearing on a stage or presenting a cake is the same thing. You need a crowd around you to do it.

I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.'

I only have so much time and energy and money, and I'm going to put it into my work.

So much time is wasted on trying to be better than others.

I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house!

As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don't want it.

And I used to write novels and little stories and compositions and I - but I put them away because I started acting when I was 17. So there wasn't much time.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

I was made fun of a lot in middle school. When I was in seventh grade, the popular kids paid the most popular guy to ask me out.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

I used to be terribly shy, so I was either shy or over the top, and I always had a difficult time.

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing, and then they marry him.

I was 5' 10 when I was 14, skinny and flat, with huge feet, and I never had a boyfriend.

I didn't go out on one date in high school.

I never really thought about modelling. It wasn't something I ever wanted to do. I used to always be so angry about modelling.

I did try to write fiction. I wrote 10 novels. And they were all just awful.

I didnt go to the high school prom. Couldn't get a date.

I didn't have the best relationship with my dad. I was bullied in school, picked on. I remember the first time of just trying to connect with girls. It was just rejection after rejection. So I always felt ugly.

I was writing 'Outlander' for practise and didn't want anyone to know I was doing it. So I couldn't very well announce to my husband that I was quitting my job and abandoning him with three small children to visit Scotland to do research for a novel that I hadn't told him I was writing.