There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You just can't will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it.
I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended.
Good writers are of necessity rare.
A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.
Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.
Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.
I've always thought that a lot of really good writers go wrong by getting so into the craft and the technique and perfection. Perfection can be the enemy sometimes. Some songs don't need to be told perfectly. Life is messy and has loose ends, and sometimes I think the songs should reflect that.
So many interviews, even ones that I consider really intelligent and good writers, will do the, like, 'Oh, you're not taking your clothes off like Miley Cyrus and all these girls' thing, which to me is just the weirdest thing to say to someone. ... Now when people are like, 'Tell me what you think of Miley!' I'll say, 'What do you think of Miley?' and they'll flounder and say, 'Well, I think she's really talented...' and I'm like, there you go.
Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive.
You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.
Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.
A good writer is always a people watcher.
There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer'.
I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I didn't have anything to write about. I wanted to go out in the world, have some adventures and then write about them.
Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.
I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes. So for me, writing from a male point of view would be a great challenge, that I would look forward to taking on.
A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react.
I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.
My parents are both really, really funny, and my little sister is a really good painter, and my other sister is a really good writer.
Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach. (4) They're geniuses at putting their emotions into words. (5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: