You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning.

Nobody wanted me. I just kept writing books and learning my craft. Most writers aren't very good in the beginning.

I talk to myself on paper about my characters - sometimes writing in first person... I keep lists of unanswered questions that I can always turn to in order to get myself going.

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.

Reading has always been a major part of my life. It has broadened my world and taken me to places I would otherwise have never seen. Now that I am a hundred years old (this September) it still takes me to the outside world I can no longer visit.

Short of throwing away all television sets, I really don't know what we can do about writing.

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot...I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.