Creative Writing Quotes - Page 5

• One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels.

  Robert Dessaix

  Writing, Offering, Unfortunate Things

  Source: www.compulsivereader.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

  Fannie Hurst

  Pain, Writing, Color

  4 Copy quote

• A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

  James M. Cain

  Writing, College, Typewriters

  12 Copy quote

• The best and only true history we have. Everyone interested in creative writing should know this book.

  Tony Ardizzone

  Book, Writing, Creative

  4 Copy quote

• I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.

  Andre Dubus

  Writing, Creativity, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.

  Joanna Newsom

  Writing, College, Years

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I read students’ attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.

  Julius Lester

  Writing, Appreciate, Creative

  4 Copy quote

• Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Editing, Space

  Orson Scott Card (1996). “Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.33, Macmillan

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have done literary translation because the University of Arkansas, where I did my MFA, was program of creative writing and translation, and it's a very different experience. You're trying to honor the writer. You shouldn't allow yourself, for example, to encounter a sentence that's three lines long and break it up into four smaller sentences.

  Miroslav Penkov

  Writing, Long, Creative

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Believe, Writing, Creative

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

  Peter Coyote

  Writing, College, San Francisco

  7 Copy quote

• A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

  Jay McInerney

  Teacher, Writing, Two

  "Novelist Jay McInerney on Getting Your Novel Underway". Interview with Anne Bowling, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was an A student and I liked creative writing.

  Trisha Yearwood

  Writing, Creative, Students

  "Trisha's Southern Comfort". Interview with Jancee Dunn, www.redbookmag.com. August 14, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.

  Ian Rankin

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Paperback Q&A: Ian Rankin on The Impossible Dead". www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

  David Knopfler

  Writing, Space, Effort

  7 Copy quote

• I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.

  Rachel Kushner

  New York, Writing, Editors

  "Rachel Kushner: 'I know what it feels like to crash a motorcycle at 140mph'". Interview with Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. June 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

  Dave Eggers

  Writing, College, Class

  6 Copy quote

• I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

  Charles Frazier

  Taken, Writing, Class

  "Week three: Charles Frazier on writing Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Teacher, Writing, School

  4 Copy quote

• I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

  Garrett Hedlund

  Teacher, Writing, Creative

  "Q&A: Garrett Hedlund 'On the road,' on illegal drugs, getting naked and Twihards" by Kase Wickman, www.mtv.com. December 18, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Teaching, Writing, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

  Etgar Keret

  Lonely, Writing, Class

  5 Copy quote

• I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Opportunity, Class

  4 Copy quote

• Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.

  A. E. Hotchner

  Flower, Writing, Two

  A. E. Hotchner (2010). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, p.11, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I got my undergrad in Creative Writing, and then I didn't get my Masters in obsession, because I figured I already had that covered.

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Creative, Obsession

  9 Copy quote