Quotes About Bad Writing

#1. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.

Andrea Seigel

#2. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.

Tony Burgess

#3. Around age 18, I decided to start writing my own stuff. I wrote some bad short films and shot them. I tried to make them better and better. I slowly learned how to make movies, and I think I'm still learning.

Quentin Dupieux

#4. My characters were ... rebelling against something ... My own bad writing. I wouldn't do for my characters what they needed for me to do - be courageous enough in my writing to make them interesting.

John Scalzi

#5. Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.

Lauren Tarshis

#6. When the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.

Louisa May Alcott

#7. Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Raymond Chandler

#8. I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.

Steven Amsterdam

#9. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#10. A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?

Lewis Carroll

#11. I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

Charles De Lint

#12. If you go to a big city anywhere in the world and you need a doctor, just ask me. I can tell you who's good and who's bad. I've even considered writing a guidebook.

Steffi Graf

#13. I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.

Robert B. Parker

#14. If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.

Steven Galloway

#15. Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick - then it's personal. The bad guy isn't just the "bad guy" anymore, he's the BAD GUY!

Michael J. Sullivan

#16. (Slap) "Owhhh ... " Raymond yelled as the Old Man's cane hit his face.

Judy Byington

#17. I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.

Gene Wilder

#18. The biggest misconception is that I only write about shitty people. Or that I'm trying to be shocking. I just think people are super weird, so I like to write characters that get addicted to things, lose their minds, hurt others, put themselves in bad situations. I'm just more interested in that.

Leslye Headland

#19. Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.

Jessica Lave

#20. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?

Gilbert Sorrentino

#21. Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.

Mark Helprin

#22. Dr. S. talked to me about magical thinking. She was right. Much depends on chance, on what we can't control, on others. She did not say that writing to Boris was a bad idea, but then she never judged anything. That was her magic. [p. 85]

Siri Hustvedt

#23. If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

Poppy Z. Brite

#24. I couldn't hack it in Hollywood, my writing's wasn't bad enough.

Russ Lippitt

#25. Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Alice Walker

#26. Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.

Carl R. Trueman

#27. I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.

Sarah Kay

#28. No.'
It's not a bad word.
And it is very important to use at times.
Practice saying it in the mirror.
It's empowering.

Christy Hall

#29. 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

#30. A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen ... Except the act of writing.

E.L. Doctorow

#31. Well, yes, as I was a rather bad actor then and I wasn't making enough money, I thought, to make enough money to not make money as an actor, I'd better do some writing.

Val Guest

#32. I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.

Don Winslow

#33. I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.

Jonas Mekas

#34. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.

Terri Windling

#35. If I teach you reading and writing, I'm warning you I've got to hit you on the head and call you bad names when you're stupid, because that's how you do teaching.

Louis De Bernieres

#36. Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

Douglas Rushkoff

#37. [Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in writings related to mathematical subjects.

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

#38. If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that?

Lauren B. Davis

#39. I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move on, and usually once I've gotten to the next scene, I'll discover what was missing from the bad version scene. Then I can easily rewrite it to get back on the right path.

Anders Holm

#40. Don't be afraid to write bad songs and then start over and re-evaluate. Songs are like plants, in that you grow them. Some grow really fast, and others need pruning and care ... And, finally, a song needs to move you. If it doesn't move you, it will never move anybody else.

Corey Harris

#41. He traced the shape of the bird, wondering what she could have done to merit writing herself a memo on her body.
"It's a very permanent sort of reminder."
She raised herself up slightly, catching his gaze and holding it. "They were really bad mistakes.

Ruthie Knox

#42. How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one

John Creasey

#43. Well, Bud," he said, looking at me, "I'll be damned if you don't go to a lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you do on your holidays? Burn houses?

William Faulkner

#44. What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.

John Connolly

#45. Every good story needs a good, bad and lost soul. A people to fight for, an item to turn the tide of battle, an enigmatic character, a motivator/mentor, and an unlikely reluctant hero.

Josh Rose

#46. You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States today.

Nelson Algren

#47. I wasn't really a dark kid, but I was in my head a lot. I got good grades all through my 16 years of Catholic school, but I was always writing these weird - and, I have to say, really bad - stories, filled with murder.

Karen Abbott

#48. There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

Ernest Hemingway,

#49. Is a twist less satisfying if you know it's coming? Is a twist that you can't predict symptomatic of bad construction? These are things to consider when writing.

Gabrielle Zevin

#50. I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

Tawni O'Dell

#51. You don't need help to write a song. You just need to get over this experience that bummed you out so bad. The relationship you were in is over, it was over a long time ago, and you need to move on.

Stevie Nicks

#52. There's this whole idea that you've got the blues and you're going to write. Bullshit. When I feel really bad, all I want to do is sit in front of the TV with the remote control and check out.

Lucinda Williams

#53. I've worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script ... but not often. Play it safe: write well.

Jerry Juhl

#54. The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style.

Tom Wolfe

#55. My writing legacy would be my true depiction of life; exploring the entire colorful spectrum of people, both good and bad, capturing it in words and exposing it to all cultures in a respectful manner - In a way that would stand the test of time.

Diane Martin

#56. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.

Marco Roth

#57. My guiltiest pleasure in life is 'America's Funniest Home Videos.' I watch them all - old, new - I don't care. Despite how bad the writing is on the show. The people getting hit and hurt, that's hilarious.

Russell Peters

#58. I honestly feel like we never had a bad episode by TV standards. Every week I felt there were so many strong components of the show, especially the writing.

Donal Logue

#59. When the loo paper gets thicker and the writing paper thinner, it's always a bad sign, at home.

Nancy Mitford

#60. Writing to corroborate what you already think is the essence of bad writing.

Victor LaValle

#61. I know the Chicago media will write a lot of bad things, but they'll write a lot of good things too. I can live with that. In Cleveland, all I got was negative press.

Albert Belle

#62. Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.

Eloisa James

#63. When you are writing a song for something else, if you are doing something for money, I always think that's bad luck.

Chad Kroeger

#64. I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Charles Bukowski

#65. Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.

Mark Shields

#66. It is a good thing to read books, and need not be a bad thing to write them, but in any case, it is a pious thing to collect them.

Frederick Locker-Lampson

#67. A piece of writing is never good," he told me. "There is simply a moment when it is less bad than before.

Joel Dicker

#68. Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen.

Russell T. Davies

#69. I think the press does, too; it's just the few crazies and paparazzi that give them a bad name. Real writers write good things. My daughter's a writer, and she's a quality writer.

Debbie Reynolds

#70. You can forgive if the shot is not right, or the lighting is a bit off, but not if the writing is bad.

Moran Atias

#71. Riffing on language will create wonderful effects you never intended. Which leads me to this writing advice: 'Always take credit for good stuff you didn't intend, because you'll be getting plenty of criticism in your career for bad stuff you didn't mean either.'

Roy Peter Clark

#72. Writing a NYT bestseller was a delightful experience. But there are many books which are read by few that should be read and reread by many, as well as books bought by many that are hardly worth the ink.

Ron Brackin

#73. To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

Maurice Ravel

#74. There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

W. Somerset Maugham

#75. I was never really satisfied with writing only text or with the way my texts looked when they were published. Most online journals have a pretty lame sense of typography - bad font, counter-intuitive margins and line spacing - that it makes me sour on my writing.

Masha Tupitsyn

#76. If you're a songwriter, you want to write a song like "Oh Yeah" that radically shifts everything. You can definitely retire on that song. You want to have something you can put in your songbook that everybody can recognize, whether it's a good or bad thing.

Margaret Cho

#77. That's the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away.

Nick Hornby

#78. I don't put a lot of pressure on myself when I'm writing. It feels like if I come up with something good, or I come up with something bad, I'm not too worried.

Moby

#79. When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don't mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It's the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

Charles Bukowski

#80. If a context and a goal is defined I could say if it's good or bad. But overall I don't view things as good or bad. So I'm like a robot or computer in that sense. So maybe that's why people don't think they know me when they read my writing.

Tao Lin

#81. I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

Noel Coward

#82. Intent and dreaming is nice but its not, will never be enough. If you want something bad enough in life then you must fight for it or go after it. Life doesn't just come to you.

R.M. Engelhardt

#83. I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.

Charles Baxter

#84. I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

Patrick White

#85. Writers: read books. Read good books. Read bad books. Learn what does and does not work.

Kira Hawke

#86. Most things good for writing are bad for life.

Lorrie Moore

#87. Once I was in college, I was actually trying to write a comedy screenplay and I wrote basically the worst movie ever and just threw it away and never showed anybody. Everyone needs to get that first bad screenplay out of your system before you start writing other stuff.

Scot Armstrong

#88. I've tried over the years all kinds of ways of going about writing and even just thinking about the idea of writing. There was a time when I decided to try to write a song each day. Whether it was good or bad wasn't important.

Kurt Wagner

#89. Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Stephen Vizinczey

#90. A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

Don Roff

#91. When reading a book, one hopes it doesn't turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.

Chila Woychik

#92. An abstract style is always bad. Your sentences should be full of stones, metals, chairs, tables, animals, men, and women.

Alain De Lille

#93. Sometimes we get discouraged and turn to inspirational writing, like stuff from Vince Lombardi: "Quitters never win and winners never quit." Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. Most people quit. They just don't quit successfully.

Anonymous

#94. If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

Thomas C. Foster

#95. I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

Lisa Edelstein

#96. Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry

William Empson

#97. There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

Aleksandar Hemon

#98. It doesn't matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.

David Chase

#99. Read, read, read. Read everything
trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner

#100. Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours; there is no life without them.

Herman Wouk