Collections Quote by Tom Glazer

My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars.

— Derek Walcott

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize…

— Sharon Creech

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

— Jim Harrison

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

— Naguib Mahfouz

At the beginning, there was no chance I'd get published so I thought I'd give it a go live. I had to perform in…

— John Cooper Clarke

I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the…

— Maya Angelou

I've written poetry most of my life.

— Julia Michaels

I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did…

— Siri Hustvedt

While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to…

— Denise Duhamel

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

— Jess Walter

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

— Erica Jong

I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.

— Norman Lock