A Quote by Ariel Levy

Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.
My novel got published, and I became a paid writer, which was nice, and then it came out, and nobody bought it, so I became an unemployed writer again.
We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.
Before we got married, I had tremendous ambition. Once we got married and I started having children, then I just thought that that was my real life. Steve was definitely more ambitious than I.
The philosophy I shared... was one of ambition - ambition to succeed, ambition to grow, ambition to move forward - backed up by hard work.
It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.
I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.
I aspired to be a writer and then I just started getting acting work. I really didn't have a direct goal, I just knew I wanted to be in this industry telling stories and doing this for a job. I thought my path was going to be as a writer, but I'm pretty happy doing it as an actor.
At some point along the way, I stopped being a writer, and I became a black writer. I never used to be a black writer. I used to write 'Spider-Man,' 'Green Lantern,' whatever was lying around. 'Thor,' 'Hulk,' whatever. Now, if the phone rings or when the phone rings, it's almost exclusively some project that has something to do with my ethnicity.
I am there to entertain. I call my work high escape fiction; it's high, it's good - but it's escape, and I have no delusions about that. I have no ambition to be a serious writer, whatever that means.
One of the most useful parts of my education as a writer was the practice of reading a writer straight through - every book the writer published, in chronological order, to see how the writer changed over time, and to see how the writer's idea of his or her project changed over time, and to see all the writer tried and accomplished or failed to accomplish.
I don't know many ambition- ridden people who really enjoy themselves. Even success doesn't seem to still the insatiable, gnawing hunger of their ambition. Ambition is a good gift, but it cannot be all.
Someone like Boris Johnson is reluctant to answer questions about ambition because then the story becomes all about his ambition. Sure, he's got ambition - that's no secret at all. But also, he's very strongly motivated to try to get the kind of Brexit he believes in.
The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one
To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.
Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!