Top 71 Quotes About Writing Skill
#1. Your ability to name every single variation of Kryptonite and every first issue in which it appears is a great pop quiz skill, but is not a great writing skill, all right? So just because you can do that doesn't mean you know how to write.
Greg Rucka
#2. Many times, what people call 'writer's block' is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical.
Pearl Cleage
#3. My students - all adults - bring a lot of writing skill to the first class, and they and I get better as the class progresses.
James Thayer
#4. Most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it.
Italo Calvino
#5. I find that the majority of the year, I don't spend acting. I spend it either writing or editing or producing, or putting things together. So it's as shocking as it is tragic. I really enjoy it. It's a valuable skill set. I certainly feel like more of a grownup.
Charlie Day
#6. Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.
Alexander Pope
#7. Develop the skill of writing to avoid errors but if you do make them, don't be demotivated
Bernard Kelvin Clive
#8. In the end, without skill or talent, I've given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chu-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we ALL live in phantom huts.
Matsuo Basho
#9. Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.
Meg Rosoff
#10. You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
Iain Banks
#11. Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.
Mindy Kaling
#12. Writing is a form of art. It is a skill; a gift. It is addiction; passion; love. It is my life.
Helen Deakin
#13. English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that.
Dean Wesley Smith
#15. The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
Edwin Schlossberg
#16. With the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton can write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index.
Rossiter Johnson
#17. Songwriting is a really fortunate skill to have to frame living and to find new ways to observe things you're going through.
Feist
#18. Day after day, week after week; writing great fiction takes time, emotion, skill and effort.
Carla H. Krueger
#19. Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.
Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.
Ernest Hemingway,
#20. Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.
Bill Gates
#21. More than half the skill of writing lies in tricking the book out of your own head.
Terry Pratchett
#22. Writing is a skill, not a talent, and this difference is important because a skill can be improved by practice.
Robert Stacy McCain
#23. Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas.
Criss Jami
#24. You know, writing is really difficult, and it takes a real patience and a skill. I don't know if I have that. I admire it in others, so much, and I envy it.
Adam Scott
#25. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
Ray Bradbury
#26. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.
Francine Prose
#27. Any academic skill is quickly achievable if charged with clear purpose and an appeal to enthusiastic self-interest. Tarzan of the Apes only needed about twenty minutes to figure out how to read the beautiful Jane Porter's cursive writing.
T.K. Naliaka
#28. High-profile columnists should remember they are in a privileged position. Writing isn't a dreadfully specific skill - it's taught to millions via our schooling system. And opinions? Well, I've yet to meet people without opinions.
Rob Manuel
#29. Eden Robinson is one of those rare artists who comes to writing with a skill and maturity that has taken the rest of us decades to achieve.
Thomas King
#30. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#31. As a writer, the main skill you need is curiosity. As a reader, the main tool you need is open-mindedness.
Gloria D. Gonsalves
#32. No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.
Atul Gawande
#33. In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
Aaron Lazar
#34. Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.
Bergen Evans
#35. My writing is a wild mustang - more thunderous than a lightning storm -and all my skill which I call art, is devoted to simply staying on ...
John Geddes
#36. Today, however, we know that writing, at least science writing, is partly a skill. And skills can be improved. The pain can be reduced.
Michael L. Rosenzweig
#38. I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.
Walter Cronkite
#39. Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible
Barack Obama
#40. As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts.
Mortimer J. Adler
#41. If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward.
James A. Michener
#42. I'm close to my audience. I think I have more tools in my box than other guys who might try it. Also, I know how to do this stuff. I know how to write and shoot and edit. I'm technically adept and that helped with the website. You need a big skill set.
Louis C.K.
#43. There's less skill and more plain hard work to writing than anyone except a writer thinks.
Mabel Seeley
#44. Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.
John Milius
#45. You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.
Ngaio Marsh
#46. When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.
Jennifer Donnelly
#47. The trip changed all that. Stirring the murk of a life ill-fitting, Something More was perceptible though without name or form. Something More was the genesis of a map, not one handed to me but rendered with each step taken, a skill seasoned by a cruise gone bad.
Gina Greenlee
#48. The central virtue of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to write, and writing makes you think. Whatever you do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly, and reasonably quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill.
Fareed Zakaria
#49. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.
Lindsay Duncan
#50. Whenever any of these new writers come up who are brilliant, I always realize that you have more talent and more skill than any of them;---but circumstances have prevented you from realizing upon the fact for a long time. [About F. Scott Fitzgerald]
Maxwell Perkins
#51. When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.
Pat Metheny
#52. Writing is done by someone. It is not, like some mythical goddess, a skill that springs forth, full grown from the genes of inspiration ...
Leonard Bishop
#53. I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.
Ernest Hemingway,
#54. Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me.
Bret Easton Ellis
#55. When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.
Richard Greenberg
#56. My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.
Thomas Hardy
#57. God gives gifts to everyone, some can write, some can dance. He gave me the skill to play football and I am making the most of it.
Ronaldinho
#58. Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.
Wallace Stegner
#59. There is both a skill factor and an effort factor in dream recall. People can develop dream recall skills, such as lying still in the morning and writing down whatever comes to mind.
Henry Reed
#61. It is almost possible to measure a writer's skill by the dexterity with which he repeats, and yet avoids monotony.
George G. Williams
#62. It's pretty easy to think of the idea of a story, and maybe even to write a scene or two, but understanding the ebb and flow of a narrative, where to leave the little clues your protagonist (and reader) need, while playing fair, takes a lot more skill and patience than you might think.
Dennis Green
#63. We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. Writing isn't always a speaking skill. Sometimes writing is a listening skill.
Daryl Farmer
#65. So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.
Patrick Macnee
#66. I do want to work on writing, because writing's a skill. Writing is something that you can train yourself to know better. To know yourself better. And it's intimidating as hell.
Kristen Stewart
#67. Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.
John Milius
#68. Some of my favorite movies are action movies. You want something good to say. That comes from good writing. But writing is not a skill I possess, unfortunately.
Jason Statham
#69. In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.
James Scott Bell
#70. Just as writing can become calligraphy when it's creatively, skillfully, and consciously performed, so can all other activities become art. In this case, we are reflecting upon life itself as an artistic statement - the art of living.
H.E. Davey
#71. Keep writing, because not only does practice improve skill, it gives you more chances to score on the market. I did that for eight years before making my first sale.
Piers Anthony
