Good Writers Quotes - Page 5

• My freshman English professor at Kent State University in 1984 told me I was a good writer, and she loved all the silly pictures I drew in my notebook. She said I should try writing children's books, and so I did.

  Dav Pilkey

  Notebook, Children, Silly

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Mean, Writing, Practice

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.4, Shambhala Publications

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• When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

  Stephen King

  Fun, Having Fun, Audience

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• A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat.

  Patricia T. O'Conner

  Sweat

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• If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

  Earl Hamner, Jr.

  Thinking, Groups, Able

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• What makes a good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious. Suspicion marks the real difference between the man who wants to write honest history and the one who'd rather write a good story.

  Jim Bishop

  Real, Writing, Men

  "Talk With Jim Bishop" by Lewis Nichols, www.nytimes.com. February 6, 1955.

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• For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, People, Giving

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.451, University of Toronto Press

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

  Edward Albee

  Truth, Writing, Reality

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

  James D. Watson

  Hero, Scientist, Knows

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• It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

  E. B. White

  Friendship, True Friend, Charlotte's Web

  Charlotte'sWeb ch. 22 (1952)

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• When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?

  Joss Whedon

  Fun, Writing, Men

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• Good writers touch life often.

  Ray Bradbury

  Ray Bradbury (1951). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Alice Munro

  Writing, People, Anecdotes

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Sep 17, 2011

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• I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Reading, Evil

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden (1966). “The Objectivist”

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• I regard posterity as vulgar as success. I don't trust posterity. I don't think what's good is necessarily recognized in the long run. Too many good writers have disappeared.

  Peter Biskind

  Running, Thinking, Long

  Peter Biskind (2013). “My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles”, p.270, Macmillan

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• Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.

  William Faulkner

  Rich, Get Rich, Bother

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• There are three things you need to be a good writer: you need to read a lot, you need to write a lot, and you need a lot of feedback.

  Clay Shirky

  Writing, Three, Needs

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• I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing. I just think that alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries.

  Tori Amos

  Believe, Reality, Thinking

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• When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you've got a good writer.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Skills, Comeback

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• You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Thinking, Order

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• Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Way, Enough

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• A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Sight, Mind

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.8, Penguin

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• A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

  John le Carre

  Wise, Experts, Tongue

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• A good writer is always a people watcher.

  Judy Blume

  People, Watchers

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• A good writer always works at the impossible.

  John Steinbeck

  Impossible

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.8, Penguin

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