Able Quote by John Henrik Clarke

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

When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote this huge long paper about how I had no idea what I was gonna do…

— Shantel VanSanten

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

— Joyce Carol Oates

In terms of moments that pushed me toward becoming a writer... My parents, my wife, and my English teacher in the 8th grade were…

— Blake Crouch

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library.…

— Sandra Cisneros

My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned…

— George Pelecanos

It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there…

— Kelley Armstrong

People didn't know certain things about me, which... I was out of creative writing class in school, Syracuse University; had a B.A. in English…

— Lou Reed

My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good writer. I…

— Judith Viorst

I think I told my parents I wanted to be a writer, just so they'd kind of think I had some direction in life.…

— Kyle Kinane

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old…

— Brian Jacques

By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved…

— Cynthia Voigt