Top 100 Quotes About Writing And Learning
#1. Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
#2. I spent a lot of time star-gazing, writing, and learning languages when the other kids were doing cooler things in Detroit.
Lizzo
#3. That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
Jackson Browne
#4. I spent years in a graduate literature program learning what makes great writing, and the only conclusion we came to was that the future of graduate literature programs was safe because nobody is ever going to agree on what makes great writing.
Brandon Sanderson
#5. I spend 60 hours a week on my business but I don't work for a minute. Work is hard. But what I do - writing, speaking, researching, learning, and sharing information - is pure joy. It's what I was called to do.
Carmine Gallo
#6. When I first started making music, it was learning other people's songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.
M. Ward
#7. If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.
S.E. Hinton
#8. I once heard a learned man say, "Every evil has its remedy, except folly. To reprimand an obstinate fool or to preach to a dolt is like writing upon the water. Christ healed the blind, the halt, the palsied, and the leprous. But the fool He could not cure."
Khalil Gibran
#9. I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.
Ron Rash
#10. You write one book and you're ready for fame and fortune. I don't know that people are spending the time and attention on learning how to write-which takes years. Everybody sees the success stories.
Sue Grafton
#12. You learn almost as much about a thinker from what he reads - in particular, what he likes and what he disdains - as from what he writes himself.
Rodney Ulyate
#13. 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.
#14. Writing is an ever learning experience of voice and thought.
J. Hale Turner
#15. If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.
Mark Twain
#16. Learning to exist in a world quite different from that which formed you is the condition, these days, of pursuing research you can on balance believe in and write sentences you can more or less live with.
Clifford Geertz
#17. Worksheets - the archenemy of abundant, purposeful reading (and discussion and writing).
Mike Schmoker
#18. I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.
Charles Soule
#19. The thing I know how to do most is write a play. I came up loving plays and learning about plays and writing plays. I actually feel like an outsider when I'm writing movies and television.
Aaron Sorkin
#20. It is no longer enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in the understanding of visual images. Our children must learn how to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche, and distinguish facts from propaganda, analysis from banter and important news from coverage.
Ernest L. Boyer
#21. 'Rocky' is an incredibly human story, and 'Creed' is very inspired by the Rocky lore, but there's something kind of profound in letting it all go. This is the first time I'm co-writing, and I'm learning as I go. This process is so different from 'Fruitvale'; hopefully it gets made.
Ryan Coogler
#22. Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.
Guy Claxton
#23. Nobody wanted me. I just kept writing books and learning my craft. Most writers aren't very good in the beginning.
Phyllis A. Whitney
#24. When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.
Carla H. Krueger
#25. Reading the word and learning how to write the word so one can later read it are preceded by learning how to write the world, that is having the experience of changing the world and touching the world.
Paulo Freire
#26. Reading and writing don't inevitably go together. You can read without learning a thing about writing, grammar, or spelling, although, you certainly can't learn anything about writing, grammar, or spelling unless you read.
Frank Smith
#27. I'm learning more about life when I'm playing too, and writing music. I'm learning more about life, the connection.
Wayne Shorter
#28. I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends.
Tom Brokaw
#29. After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to come back to Earthsea and write the next three books in another and newer tradition: that of questioning, rather than accepting, the gendering of power as male.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#30. What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?
Henry David Thoreau
#31. I'm trying to get in the habit of, you know, picking up a book and learning how to write my feelings down, not my feelings but my thoughts, about things, and hopefully I'll moving toward the writing and directing thing soon.
Corey Haim
#32. A certain elementary training in statistical method is becoming as necessary for everyone living in this world of today as reading and writing.
H.G.Wells
#33. I don't go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.
Lorrie Moore
#34. How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word?
'Why is this so?' I demanded to know.
Theresa Breslin
#35. Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#36. If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.
Gerald R. Ford
#37. Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
Frank McCourt
#38. One learns best, and writes best, in a state of defiance.
Fay Weldon
#39. You can never know too much about writing. If you think you know everything, you're not leaving yourself open to learn ... The best writers are always learning, exploring, and trying to improve.
Sabrina Jeffries
#40. 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
#41. Part of my learning curve as a novice screenwriter was peeling back the layers and getting to the core of the story. I was really blessed to have two amazing writing mentors who helped me along the way. They always encouraged me to be okay with a simple story.
Aurora Guerrero
#42. In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.
E. O. Wilson
#43. I certainly wasn't born with creative writing. Maybe there's a certain amount of learning and then it's up to the person. I think in the end it's your favourite books that are the best teachers. That's the way I've learned the most, by far.
Markus Zusak
#45. Learning is deeper and more durable when it's effortful. Learning that's easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.
Peter C. Brown
#46. I will consistently strive to learn by what I hear, see, and feel. I will write down the important things I learn, and I will do them.
Richard G. Scott
#47. I learned early on that I could get a lot of attention by singing and writing little songs, so it was like throwing nuts to a monkey ... I just couldn't get enough.
Dolly Parton
#48. The great thing about Coulson is that he's a little bit like a party game, where the next person who gets ahold of him gets to write another sentence. I'm constantly learning more and more about the guy.
Clark Gregg
#49. My father used to say that you could only access culture before cinema by learning to read and write, but that once cinema was invented, knowledge was available to anybody.
Isabella Rossellini
#50. Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.
Bill Gates
#51. I took a lot time to do the first album, and I was really happy about that album. I co-wrote the songs and it was a learning process. When I was working on that album I realized, for the first time, that I could write my own songs.
Tove Styrke
#52. Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.
Beryl Bainbridge
#53. There is a whole industry in America of people who want to write, and those who teach it. Even if the students don't end up writing, what's good about them taking the courses is, they become great readers, learning to appreciate the writing.
Edmund White
#54. I tend to avoid writing music about initial reactions to situations, like frustration or anger. I'd rather wait till I go through the problem, and write about the learning that took place.
Yanni
#55. I do a lot of research for my books. I can't possibly know all the things I write about and I love learning new things. I spend hours and hours doing research in books, libraries and online. [Once] I traveled to the reservation to get the settings and the flavor of the place down right.
Linda Conrad
#56. The liberal arts are the arts of communication and thinking. 'They are the arts indispensable to further learning, for they are the arts of reading, writing, speaking, listening, figuring,
Oliver DeMille
#57. I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.
Kage Baker
#58. The passion for self improvement is the love for reading, learning and writing.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#59. When I was young, I wanted to be a writer or painter. I was always writing stories, and I excelled at drawing. My teachers encouraged my art work. When I was 9 or 10, I began learning piano and started writing music.
Bat For Lashes
#60. Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.'
Jack McDevitt
#61. Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness.
Kelly Link
#62. I was learning the craft; I didn't study writing in school. Rejection was my motivation, and failure is what taught me.
Pierce Brown
#63. Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job o fa creative person ... Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#64. Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.
Susan Wiggs
#65. The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever
of learning the alphabet.
Nat Turner
#66. I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning.
Mahatma Gandhi
#67. I haven't had a chance to pick up a good book in a long time, because I've been either reading scripts or learning them or writing them. And so, by the time the day is done, I usually just want to click on The Bachelor and fall asleep. But I gravitate toward biographies and things like that.
Justin Theroux
#68. I'm skeptical of passive learning. If you don't write down what you're hearing and learning, what the odds you remember it?
Ben Casnocha
#69. In the Phaedrus, Plato argued that the new arrival of writing would revolutionize culture for the worst. He suggested that it would substitute reminiscence for thought and mechanical learning for the true dialect of the living quest for truth by discourse and conversation.
Marshall McLuhan
#70. Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
Cameron Crowe
#71. Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.
P.D. James
#72. An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they're creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can't make it better.
Johnny Rich
#73. I think we can question whether degrees are antediluvian. Online learning has flexibility. Why not master courses in energy, writing, communications, and engineering and get a credential?
Anant Agarwal
#74. Take a great adventure to a place, learn the rich history and make your own observation about the place.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#75. One thing that's paramount in my life is that I am alone. I'm a loner. And yet I have many friends and I don't feel lonely. And I even like my own company. But when I'm alone, it's to read or write. I'm in my thoughts. Mostly I'm learning.
Agnes Denes
#76. 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
#77. Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
Ryan Adams
#78. I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I've been at it pretty much 50 years, and I'm now beginning to learn how to do the job well.
Harlan Ellison
#79. The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.
Tracy Kidder
#80. I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.
Shirley Knight
#81. The best advice I have is keep writing, keep practicing, keep winning, losing and understanding the difference. Never stop learning, never stop pushing yourself. Then find yourself a team you can work well with and help make awesome things happen.
Rhianna Pratchett
#82. I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.
David Nicholls
#83. When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.
Criss Jami
#84. There've been times when I have existential conversations with myself, and I've thought about leaving and trying to apply my education better. But ultimately it doesn't really matter. Learning how to write, learning how to write papers and structure, that's been very helpful for writing.
Rashida Jones
#85. True learning happens when books and friends, writing and understanding intermingle in a rich soup of participation.
R. David Lankes
#86. The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation.
Paul A. Baran
#87. I remember learning to drive on my dad's lap. Did you guys ever do that? He'd work the brakes. I'd work the wheel. Then I went to take the driver's test and sat on the examiner's lap. I failed the exam. But he still writes to me. That's the really nice part.
Garry Shandling
#88. Keep Reading.
Keep Writing.
Keep Pushing yourself!
And never stop learning!
We writerly types have to stick together mostly because everybody else thinks we're "weird".
Darynda Jones
#89. Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.
Jim Rash
#90. In the year 2000 an illiterate person will not be someone who can't read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again.
Alvin Toffler
#91. I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.
Chris Wooding
#92. When I was writing my dissertation, I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification.
Bat For Lashes
#93. A doctorate study is the passion for extensive research, reading, thinking and writing.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#94. I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service.
William Shakespeare
#95. When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.
Alicia Keys
#96. Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them to be grammarians.
Herbert Simon
#97. {Y}ou make do with what you're given, and I've spent a good many years learning to write fine-sounding sentences so that I can hide behind them. It's the way of the hermit crab, with nothing to recommend it but the pretty shell it annexes for its own.
Norman Lock
#98. Writing is like sex, you are always learning new things and nuances.
T-Boner
#99. Write hand-written notes daily and commit to supporting the growth and self-esteem of children, because it makes such a big difference in terms of their capacity for learning.
Debra Messing
#100. Old texts, myths, and religions have always fascinated me, though I prefer learning about them to writing papers and trying to make thoughts and arguments regarding their effect or meaning - this being the essence of my time in religious studies.
Tom Shields
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