Good Writers Quotes - Page 7

• A good writer is always a people watcher.

  Judy Blume

  People, Watchers

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your job description as a journalist is to question and scrutinize critically-neve r to repeat claims uncritically, no matter how highly placed the sources in the bureaucracy. Don't ever forget that. You're a damn good writer, but that talent is completely worthless if you forget your job description.

  Steig Larsson

  Jobs, Matter, Talent

  4 Copy quote

• A good writer is not someone who knows how to write- but how to rewrite

  William Goldman

  Writing, Know How, Knows

  35 Copy quote

• No theoretician, no writer on art, however interesting he or she might be, could be as interesting as Picasso. A good writer on art may give you an insight to Picasso, but, after all, Picasso was there first.

  David Hockney

  Art, Giving, Interesting

  David Hockney, Paul Joyce (1988). “Hockney on photography: conversations with Paul Joyce”, Harmony

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader's eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things.

  Bill Barich

  Eye, Usual, Way

  6 Copy quote

• Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. 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. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

  William Faulkner

  Art, Horse, Hands

  1956 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

  Charles de Lint

  Attitude, Writing, Character

  4 Copy quote

• You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

  Peter Abrahams

  Good Person, Badness, Shows

  Peter Abrahams (2009). “End of Story”, p.4, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

  Alexander Pope

  Believe, Forgiving, Vices

  Alexander Pope (1873). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Edited with Notes and Introductory Memoir by Adolphus William Ward”, p.4

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to be a good writer, you've got to be a bad boss. Self-discipline and stamina are the two major arms in a writer's arsenal.

  Leon Uris

  Self, Order, Two

  6 Copy quote

• Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

  Dan Harmon

  Hate, Writing, Doe

  5 Copy quote

• Being a good writer doesn’t make you a good reporter, it takes hustle.

  David Carr

  Hustle, Reporters

  "David Carr, New York Times columnist, dies suddenly after collapsing in office" by Ben Doherty, www.theguardian.com. February 13, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him.

  Jacqueline Susann

  Hands, Want, Shakes

  4 Copy quote

• I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Dog, Want, Impulse

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

  John Banville

  Half, Letters, Firsts

  "A Day in the Life". New York Review of Books Article, www.nybooks.com. May 26, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Men, Judging

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.5

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Appreciation, Men, Long

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen”, p.305

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Style, Spirit, Language

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans”, p.159

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent. The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.

  Ben Hecht

  Men, Differences, Fifty

  18 Copy quote

• One wouldn't want to say that what makes a good writer is the number of books that the writer wrote because you could write a whole number of bad books. Books that don't work, mediocre books, or there's a whole bunch of people in the pulp tradition who have done that. They just wrote... and actually they didn't write a whole bunch of books, they just wrote one book many times.

  Walter Mosley

  Book, Writing, Numbers

  Big Think Interview with Andrew Dermont, November 10, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don't want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.

  Richard Gere

  Writing, Quality, Want

  "New Again: Richard Gere". Interview with Andy Warhol and Maura Moynihan, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 28, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A writer is like a gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like any government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Hands, Government, Gypsy

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that. That's an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.

  Alan Lightman

  Country, Emotional, Class

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I knew that I was a good writer in high school and won awards, and I was the editor of my school newspaper. So I knew that I was a good writer and I wanted to somehow capitalize and sort of utilize a talent that I thought I had.

  Halle Berry

  School, Awards, Editors

  "Halle Berry Is the Perfect Stranger". "MovieWeb" Interview, movieweb.com. April 9, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source