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I have an English literature degree. I wanted to be the next great American novelist from a very early age, but I put it aside for a while, because I got very realistic at one point.

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.

I went through a phase where I wanted to be a writer... but it's not social enough.

I want to be a writer someday.

I'm from Ohio, and I wasn't one of those kids who grew up making movies or whatever, but I always wanted to write. I was probably in high school when I realized the things I was writing weren't books; they were movies, they were visual.

I love being able to be a writer. That's what I moved to New York to be.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.

Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.