Good Writing Quotes - Page 8

• Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

  Peter Carey

  Writing, Talent, Teach

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

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• I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

  Shawn Colvin

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Every actor just wants good writing.

  Jeff Daniels

  Writing, Actors, Want

  "Jeff Daniels, star of The Newsroom, on walking, talking, and not getting typecast". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2012.

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• Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

  Jeff Daniels

  Writing, Play, Giving

  "Jeff Daniels, star of The Newsroom, on walking, talking, and not getting typecast". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2012.

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• No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Clouds, Vagueness

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.50, Modern Library

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• I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Good Luck, Sharks

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• Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.

  Sanaa Lathan

  Writing, Storytelling, Appeals

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• If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

  Katherine Paterson

  Art, Believe, Book

  Katherine Paterson (1981). “Gates of excellence: on reading and writing books for children”, Dutton Juvenile

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• My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

  Dick Schaap

  Writing

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• Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Writing, Learning, Mean

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• But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.

  William Carlos Williams

  Art, Lying, Writing

  William Carlos Williams (1920). “Kora in Hell: Improvisations”

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• All I want is a modest place in Mr X's Good Reading, Miss Y's Good Writing, and that new edition of One Thousand Best Bits of Recent Prose.

  James Agate

  Reading, Writing, Missing

  James Agate (1942). “Ego 5: Again More of the Autobiography of James Agate”

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• Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, May, Attributes

  Northrop Frye (1996). “Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963”

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• There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing.

  Mindy Kaling

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Good writing is always new.

  A. S. Byatt

  Writing

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• I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.

  Sherman Alexie

  Writing, Two, Years

  David Lehman, Sherman Alexie (2015). “The Best American Poetry 2015”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• You have to go where the good writing is.

  Damian Lewis

  Writing

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• Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Order, Perfection

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.9

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• Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Effort, Healthy

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• Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

  Jasper Fforde

  Writing, Agents, Want

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• Really good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.

  Ann Voskamp

  Running, Writing, Perspective

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• Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.

  David Nicholls

  Writing, People, Abstract

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• I would say that I am proud of my performance from Cracker and I think a lot of that was due to the writing was just so good. It's so rare that you get such good writing these days but it was awhile ago.

  Boti Bliss

  Writing, Thinking, Proud

  Source: actionflickchick.com

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• These days, most of my interactions with young people are centered on the poetry or theater classes I teach, so the students I know are reading contemporary poets (they love Willie Perdomo) and scripts (No Child, by Nilaja Sun and Twilight by Anna Deavere Smith). I don't know their reading habits outside of our class, but I believe that they enjoy stories that they can relate to, learn from, be challenged by - you know, the usual good writing that every reader craves.

  Renee Watson

  Children, Believe, Reading

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Distinguish between the work and the job title. When I was leaving school in the early 1970s, many people wanted to be journalists, carrying out investigative reporting for print newspapers. Print newspapers may not exist in twenty years. But good thinking and good writing about issues that need to be reported and investigated will always be needed; but where this happens, what it is called, and who pays for it may be quite different than could have been envisioned by the great journalists of the past.

  Howard Gardner

  Jobs, School, Writing

  Source: howardgardner.com

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