Good Writers Quotes - Page 10

• A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.

  David Mamet

  Meaningful, Cutting, Get Better

  David Mamet (1991). “On Directing Film”, Penguin Group USA

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• I retained no records and I am not a good writer anyhow. So the best approach is for historians like you to extract the facts directly from people like me.

  Shunroku Hata

  People, Records, Facts

  "Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939". Book by Alvin D. Coox, p. 1184, 1990.

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• A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

  Alice McDermott

  Sooner Or Later, Knows, Sells

  Alice McDermott (2013). “A Bigamist's Daughter”, p.82, A&C Black

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• I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

  Jodi Picoult

  Hard Work, Mean, Thinking

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• I want to become a very good writer.

  Kellie Martin

  Want, Very Good

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• I'm not famous for my back story investigations; I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

  Bill Nighy

  Lucky, Stories, Scripts

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• Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Way, Doe

  Harlan Ellison (2016). “Slippage”, p.128, Hachette UK

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• A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.

  Garry Disher

  Way, Crime, Evoke

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• A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.

  Karl Kraus

  Writing, Numbers, Doe

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• There's a lot of things that I've done to stick into the box set. You never have it this good. I think people should bargain. They shouldn't just buy the set, it's a little expensive [anyway]. But they should say - I'll give them dialogue, I'm a good writer.

  Mel Brooks

  Thinking, People, Giving

  "INTERVIEW Mel Brooks on how to play Hitler, and how he almost died making Spaceballs". Interview with Steve Heisler, www.avclub.com. December 13, 2012.

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• A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time.

  Richard Hugo

  Teacher, Writing, Creative

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• A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.

  John le Carre

  Writing, Cat, Watches

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• This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Believe, Branches, Mathematics

  Writings of Charles. Sanders Peirce Volume 3 (p. 279)

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• Well a good writer writes, a good musician listens to a lot more than he actually composes, and if you're going to do lyrics - well, there's a Freudian slip. That's not even a slip, that's a Freudian move: I said going to do lyrics. If you really want it to ring true, you'll live it first. Go really get your heart broken!

  David Lee Roth

  Moving, Writing, Heart

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• If you want to be a good writer, make sure you read. I'm amazed by how many people don't bother to do that.

  Mitch Albom

  People, Want, Bother

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• There are very few good writers about art, and you either get art-fashion writing with trendy views or you get very traditional writing. Occasionally, you get people who can write in an interesting way. Really, I think in a sense art writing needs to be renewed as well. It's in a pretty bad condition.

  Marc Quinn

  Fashion, Art, Writing

  "Marc Quinn on artwriting (2000)". Interview with R.J. Preece, www.artdesigncafe.com. November 13, 2010.

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• I do increasingly feel like becoming a better writer is about trying to find new ways to solve the same problems over and over again, and I'll maybe be a good writer after I have solved the same problem ten million times.

  Mike Young

  Trying, Way, Becoming

  Source: atticusreview.org

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• I say that being a smart writer doesn't make you a good writer. There's obviously a difference between talent and intelligence. And it may be that at some point intelligence begins to impinge on talent, or talent on intelligence.

  Gustavo Perez Firmat

  Smart, Differences, May

  Source: www.gustavoperezfirmat.com

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• All good writers inspire me as I have never thought I was any good. As far as a writer who made me think I could do it, it was Henry Miller. Not because I thought he was so simple that I reckoned I could pull it off as well, but it was his freedom and guts that really moved me to want to write all the time.

  Henry Rollins

  Writing, Thinking, Simple

  "#tbt An Interview with Henry Rollins". Interview with Eric Stein, www.brothersdepaul.com. January 7, 2015.

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