Professional Writer Quotes

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This collection holds 27 professional writer quotes, drawn from writers, leaders, artists and thinkers across the QuoteForever archive. The most quoted voices here are Richard Bach, Zoya Akhtar and Tracy Kidder.

They are ordered so that each author has a say before anyone repeats, which means the first page gives you the range of the topic rather than one writer's back catalogue.

Use the grid and list views to change how much of each quote you see, follow an author's name to read everything else they said, or open a quote on its own page to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

So at 19, I faced my first blank page as a professional writer.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

I've had menial jobs, and 'professional writer' isn't one of them.

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

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.

Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.

I am not a food critic. Or a chef. Or even a professional writer. What I am schooled in the art of, however, is enjoying myself.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

When I first started doing stand-up back in Philadelphia, the idea of being a professional writer was completely beyond me. It didn't even occur to me that that was something you could do.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dramatized with dialogue and telling descriptions of who is present and what they're all doing.

I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses.

The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.

I've heard some writers say things like, 'Well, I'm a professional writer. I only start books I know I can finish.' I look at it maybe the other way: I only want to write books I'm not sure I can write.

One of the ironies of being a professional writer is that, if you are even moderately successful, the very traits that let you succeed as a writer are not much help when the time comes to head out as 'The Author.'

If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something.

My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor.

Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional writer.

I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.

For a professional writer in the Soviet Union, it works this way. First, you have to have something to say - that's the main thing. Second, it's a matter of who publishes you. If your book has real stuff in it, readers will ferret it out, even in a Siberian journal.

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living.

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that.

I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.

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