Quote

I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid.

I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.

I'm into books - I love literature, so I toyed with the idea of being an English teacher. I had a fantastic English teacher at school. I think great English teachers make the world go round.

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.

I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.

Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

I think of myself as a writer as much as I think of myself as a linguist and an academic. I really enjoy writing - playing with language and getting just the right metaphor.