I think Quote by Derek Walcott

I think I would have been a totally different kind of writer if I'd gone to England. I might have developed a cynicism about…

— Derek Walcott

I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I…

— James Salter

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

— Colin Wilson

Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to…

— Tracy Chevalier

If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer.

— Justin Cartwright

It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to…

— Jon McGregor

I became a writer, a teller of tales, because otherwise I would have died... or worse.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.

— Patrick Modiano

English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.

— Zadie Smith

England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about…

— Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I did not consider that I would lead a literary life. I'd thought initially, as a young girl, that I would be a teacher,…

— Joyce Carol Oates

Becoming a writer wasn't a choice (there would have been far more worthwhile things to do); it was the best, most fruitful way of…

— Alain de Botton