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One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.

I felt a failure because I couldn't sustain myself from what I earned from my writing. My day jobs were what mattered, and it was hard to even get those because universities wouldn't hire me as a real writer.

My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.

I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do, and actually failed.

My paternal grandfather was a failed novelist. He stacked boxes of rejected manuscripts in a closet.

I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

I didn't know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn't afraid to fail.

You fail only if you stop writing.