Top 30 Quotes About What Makes Good Writing
#1. I think what makes good writing is intimacy - putting the reader inside the character's head. Many books are bad because they're merely guidebooks for sightseers.
Raymond Bolton
#2. The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
J.K. Rowling
#3. Writing a funny story is one thing. But writing a funny story that inspires others to venture beyond their level of comfort in pursuit of their greater good is what makes me come alive.
Romany Malco
#4. The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don't have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.
Sally Mann
#5. Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.
Ben Jonson
#6. What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
Edward Dahlberg
#7. In general, teaching writing makes me a far better reader because there's so many ways to write a good sentence or a good story, and as a teacher I'm obliged to consider them all, rather than staying in the safety of my own tendencies.
Leni Zumas
#8. I think what makes good children's books is putting the same care and effort into it as if I was writing for adults. I don't write anything - put anything in my books - that I'd be embarrassed to put in an adult book.
Louis Sachar
#9. 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
#10. The same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
Jean De La Bruyere
#11. Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.
Kimberly Willis Holt
#12. Lying in small doses makes a good storyteller great.
Bryan Way
#13. Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.
Ernest Hemingway,
#15. I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories.
Emma Donoghue
#16. A thank-you card," repeated Alice. "Yes. I know, I know, it's teaching them good manners and everything, but I sort of hate those thank-you cards. I always imagine the kids groaning and having to be forced into writing them. It makes me feel like an elderly aunt.
Liane Moriarty
#17. Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
Harold Pinter
#18. Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.
Lauren Oliver
#19. Nerds get what they want when they want it, and they go psycho if it's not immediately available. Nerds overfocus. I guess that's the problem. But it's precisely this ability to narrow-focus that makes them so good at code writing ...
Douglas Coupland
#20. Nothing makes me happier than writing a song that I think is good or that I want to play. Writing songs helps me.
Nina Nesbitt
#21. Good writing is deceptive in that it hides its own artifice - it makes it seem easy.
Michael Arndt
#22. Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [ ... ] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is.
Donald A. Norman
#23. 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
#24. But Katherine is different from all of those other girls. She never wanted anything to do with me, writing me off as some kind of filthy manwhore. That fact makes me respect her as a good judge of character, since it's pretty accurate.
Sabrina Paige
#25. Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style, - which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity
Cyril Connolly
#26. Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind
vividly, forcefully ...
Samuel R. Delany
#27. I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.
Colin Hay
#28. A good preview makes you can't wait to see the whole movie.
A.D. Posey
#30. I think alcohol is a good drug for me when I'm writing. I don't think I've ever had a problem with it. I can stop for a few weeks, so I think it's okay. I don't think it's good for my liver, but I do love it. It's a huge part of my life, and it makes me happy.
Ben Folds
