Beach Quote by Alex Garland

I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on…

— William Finnegan

I really enjoy writing novels. Its like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

— Denis Johnson

I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

— Denis Johnson

I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find…

— Steven Pressfield

At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I…

— Ashwin Sanghi

I spent six years after my first novel and five years after my second without getting into a new book.

— Karl Ove Knausgard

The first thing I tried to write was a novel, when I took that time off in grad school. Then I didn't finish it.…

— Elif Batuman

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every…

— Patrick Modiano

I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a…

— Jodi Picoult

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and…

— Donald Ray Pollock

I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I…

— Philipp Meyer

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

— Michael Connelly