Literary Pursuit Quotes

I was always a keen reader. I jotted down one or two things, but it never occurred to me to think of a job in writing. I thought that writers were like demi-gods. I don't know what I thought.

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.

All I'm about is just the pen.

There came a time when I felt I was not going to be satisfied with life unless I could write.

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.

When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.

Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.

Literature professes to be important while at the same time considering itself an object of doubt. It confirms itself as it disparages itself. It seeks itself: this is more than it has a right to do, because literature may be one of those things which deserve to be found but not to be sought.

I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

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

I don't think I ever had a morning where I woke up and said I'm going to be a professional poet. I know I've always loved poetry, I've always loved writing poetry and I've always loved sharing poetry. I've also always known that I wanted that to somehow be a very large part of my life and I'm very fortunate that it's such a large part of my life.

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

In 2004, I took a one year sabbatical to finish my second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. At the end of that year, I was not done with my book, and had to in effect resign from work. I did. I never went back.

Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer.

Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.

All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed ... No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

I didn't write a book. It wasn't for self-enrichment.

I only work on my books at nights and at weekends. It is really just like a hobby.

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.