Writers on writing

Since I wish to be a writer I'm often interested in what published writers have to say about writing.  I recently read this in the "acknowledgements" of a book where the author was thanking all those who helped her:

"It takes a village to make a writer.  I'm one of the lucky ones who has always known writing is what I was meant to do.  I arrived at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, at the age of fifteen, typewriter in hand, and wrote for nearly twenty years straight without earning as much as one cent.  Only at the age of thirty-four did things shift for me, and I've earned my living as a writer ever since.  I say that for all of the writers following in my footsteps.  Don't give up."

-- Annie Jacobsen, author of Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

And who'd have thought anyone was still actually writing by hand?  This author is thanking someone who typed it all up for him:

"I wrote the drafts in longhand on the blank back sides of junk mail, sometimes late at night, when the slant of my scrawl defied translation."

-- Joseph J. Ellis, author of First Family: Abigail & John Adams