Good Writers Quotes - Page 8

• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• If you're really a good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read, and you'll be produced somehow. It just works that way. If you're just a simple ordinary day-to-day craftsman, no different than most, then the likelihood is that you probably won't make it in writing.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Simple, Ordinary Days

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Struggle, Writing, Mean

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• I think I'm a good writer. I think I have my own voice, which is unique to everyone, everyone has their own voice; if they would just write from a vulnerable embarrassing place, it's going to be universal and it's going to be entertaining. Because everyone is the same and everyone is unique.

  Nicole Holofcener

  Writing, Thinking, Unique

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Do we have good writers, producers and actors in the U.K.? Yes we do.

  Eric Fellner

  Actors, Producers

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• A bench in the street can be a good writer because all kind of material comes onto it like a heavy rain!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Rain, Benches, Kind

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• I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

  Alexander Pope

  Believe, Qualifications, Rejecting

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

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• To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Thinking, Editors, Needs

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• You have to be an extremely good reader to appreciate what a good writer is. There are some people who are completely insensitive to good writing.

  Robert Caro

  Writing, People, Appreciate

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• Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer. I'm very interested in studying cultures and social issues, but as an academic I don't think I would have been too successful.

  George Lucas

  Writing, Successful, Thinking

  "Cinematic Phenomenon". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 19, 1999.

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• Good writers will, indeed, do well to imitate the ingenious traveller. . .who always proportions his stay in any place.

  Henry Fielding

  Proportion, Wells, Traveller

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• A good writer writes with a camera, not a pen.

  Robert Newton Peck

  Writing, Cameras, Pens

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• Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.

  Walker Percy

  Beats, South

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• Good writers show rather than tell. Stories are told in action. Life stories are no different.

  Donald Miller

  Different, Stories, Action

  Twitter post from Jun 19, 2015

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• The news business is simple but it's not easy to do well. You know the story, you have to cover it, you need pictures, you need good writers, you have to get it to the screen but it's obviously not easy to do well.

  Jai Courtney

  Simple, Needs, News

  Source: www.ft.com

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

  William Goldman

  Writing, Know How, Knows

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• 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

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• 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.

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