Top 100 Write What You Know Quotes
#1. Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!
Gore Vidal
#2. When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.
Marie Howe
#3. I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.
Rob McClure
#4. The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. And it works.
T.C. Boyle
#5. Don't write what you know. Write what you love. That's what will keep you writing.
Chris Humphreys
#6. You just write what you know, and I know what it's like to be a teenager in 1993,, and I'm a woman, so I'm definitely going to write from that point of view.
Maggie Carey
#7. That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
Jennifer Egan
#8. Write what you know. But make sure someone else would want to know it too!
Matthew Culberson
#9. Don't write what you know - what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you - and interests you deeply - and your readers will catch fire at your words.
Valerie Sherwood
#10. Don't 'write what you know.' Make up something new!
Joe Haldeman
#12. For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.
Uma Thurman
#13. People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.
Steve Toltz
#14. Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Joe Haldeman
#15. Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?
P. J. O'Rourke
#16. Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out?
Holly Bourne
#17. The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'
Julia Glass
#18. People say write what you know, but I say write about what makes your blood race. Write about that, and your words will become sails filled with a strong wind.
Ellery Adams
#19. When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
Natalie Goldberg
#20. 'Write what you know' works, but it's limiting. Write what fascinates you. Write what you can't stop thinking about.
Brian Koppelman
#21. You write what you know, and I know rock and roll.
Greg Kihn
#22. You can't always write what you know - not exactly what you know. You can, however, write what you see.
Brandon Sanderson
#23. There's a saying - "Write what you know." It's bad advice if you take it as an unbreakable rule, but good advice if you use it as a foundation.
Stephen King
#24. I don't agree with the sentiment 'write what you know.' ... I think one should write what one doesn't know. The world is bigger and wider and more complex than our small subjective selves. One should prod, goad the imagination.
Cynthia Ozick
#25. I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.
David Liss
#26. Write what you know. Write what you don't know. But most of all, write what you'd rather not know.
Sam Lipsyte
#27. Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.
Tom Robbins
#28. The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best - write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:
Austin Kleon
#29. They say, 'Write what you know.' What I know isn't cheerleader; it has a little bit of teeth to it.
Melissa Marr
#30. Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'
Jennifer McMahon
#31. Write what you know, to create the world you do not.
N.A. Shoemaker
#32. If you write what you know about, you will always be on safe ground. I am very edgy and nervous about going into territories I know nothing about. That's why you don't find much high finance, group sex, or yachting parties in my stories.
Maeve Binchy
#33. Don't write for the market or for others. Write what you know, love and above all, write what you would love to read.
Mark Rubinstein
#34. Write what you know. Write what you want to know more about. Write what you're afraid to write about.
Cecil Murphey
#35. You can only write what you know if you've lived, otherwise, you'll just be writing words.
Joseph Eastwood
#36. The worst advice a young writer can get is "Write what you know." Imagination is more important than experience.
Joe Haldeman
#37. Write what you know. Write what you can't forget. Write to give yourself courage and others hope.
Nikki Rosen
#38. Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
Howard Nemerov
#39. Write what you know and embroider the rest - Sue Cross
Sue Cross
#40. I'm of the school 'Write what you know.' You can educate yourself, but the best writing usually comes from the heart.
Terrence McNally
#41. Don't write what you know. Write who you are. Write your heart and soul. Write what you dream of when you look to the stars.
Luke Taylor
#42. Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
#43. The banal advice of writ in teachers is "write what you know," but the truth is, you don't know a place until you write it. "Write what you want to know" is more like it.
Phyllis Rose
#44. I think that people get into trouble when they photograph something that they ... that is not in their world. It's like when they say "write what you know."
Carol Friedman
#45. Any writing teacher tells you to write what you know, and for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well.
Kristin Gore
#46. Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.
Roman Coppola
#47. One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: 'Write what you know.' Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies' cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are.
Carol Berg
#48. You'd only write what you know and what you know is what you do and the people you know. So you'd write about them or the people you have met casually. It's part of your life.
Carl Reiner
#49. You don't write what you know, or you would write one thing. I never understood that. You write what you want to find out.
Nora Roberts
#50. They always say, doing what I do for a living, write what you know and then people will respond to it. I luckily had a very charming, lovable mom who I think everybody could see bits and pieces of their mom in. All I had to do was write a character that was like my mom, and it made my life easier.
Dan Fogelman
#51. Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?
Raymond Carver
#52. The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'
Tom Robbins
#53. If you only write what you know, you'll never know anything else. If you only write what you see you'll never see anything else. In order to experience new things you must always step outside of your comfort zone, or your live you life never knowing anything new
Adam Snowflake
#54. You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? I say 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?
Kurt Vonnegut
#55. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think
I did
that God put you on earth to blow your father away.
Stephen King
#56. As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.
George Bernard Shaw
#57. No one I know actually reads what I write, so thank heavens for you strangers.
Sarah Vowell
#58. If you want to know what you look like, look into a mirror. If you want to know how you think, you should write
Dennis Prager
#59. For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.
Anthony Marra
#60. I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me.
Jill Alexander Essbaum
#61. I'm kind of concerned about 'Ego & Hubris' because I'm thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they'll wonder, 'Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?'
Harvey Pekar
#62. I don't know what any of my songs are about. I don't sit down to write about anything. They're about whatever you want. I don't pick subjects. I just start.
Liam Gallagher
#63. When you know who you are as an artist and you have your own identity and got it figured out it helps you know what to write about.
Keifer Thompson
#64. Write, write, write! Get your you-know-what in the chair and write more books: write the books of your heart and don't let stress steal your joy.
Sarra Cannon
#65. Do you know anything about fashion magazines? Being treated like superficial bimbos by men like you, and having to write about designer brands. Do you know what that feels like?
Suh Jung
#66. If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.
Nick Cave
#67. I really feel like sometimes I'll write these songs, and I'll just think, 'You know that couldn't have come from me alone.' I believe that God inspires us. I believe that He gives us gifts and talents, and it's up to us to develop them and choose what we do with them.
Lindsey Stirling
#68. You know, you should start to be in plays and things like that. Write some scripts. If you're an artist and you truly don't believe what you're spittin' then you need to really seriously be an actor then.
Chuck D
#69. I don't want somebody who writes like me [in my writing staff]. Because I can write like me. I know what I'm capable of and what my limitations are. If you're going to build an orchestra, you don't want all tubas - you want a violin and you want a cello and you want a drum set.
Tom Fontana
#70. I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma ... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?
Toni Morrison
#71. Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.
Robin McKinley
#72. A cop told me, a long time ago, that there's no substitute for knowing what you're doing. Most of us scribblers do not. The ones that're any good are aware of this. The rest write silly stuff. The trouble is this: The readers know it.
George V. Higgins
#73. [Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.
William T. Vollmann
#74. I think you can write about what you know for about an hour and a half. Then you have to start bullshitting. So I say, lie to me and lie to me well. The only way to write well is to write accurately. Accuracy is not about the reader, it's about the subject and the character.
A.M. Homes
#75. The best thing to do is to write about what you know, and if you write about what you know you can always pull those nice little tidbits that hook people, that shows that you know about this world and can bring people into a world that they may not know nothing about.
Ice Cube
#76. People will think you brilliant
only if you tell them what they know.
To avoid being thought brilliant,
avoid knowing what they know.
Write to discover to yourself
what you know.
Anarchism is Not Enough
Laura Riding Jackson
#77. You cannot write your character until you know how he or she thinks, until you know what their philosophy is in the world that they occupy.
Don Roff
#78. WRITE EVERYTHING YOU know about dying. Just go. Don't think, "What does she mean by that?" Dive in. We die in all kinds of ways. Who died? When did they die? how? why?
Natalie Goldberg
#79. You have to know human behaviour ... And the quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You'll never write above what you know about people.
Tony Gilroy
#80. I love to write rhymes that have that perfect jingle. You know what I'm saying when it makes your Heart tingle.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
#81. To me, it makes more sense to write different songs and to play different kinds of music and to find your own voice. But no matter what, get out and play for people. Get out and learn, and do everything that you can, you know?
Corey Taylor
#82. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."
George Saunders
#83. Don't write about what you don't know even if you don't know it.
Gertrude Stein
#84. I don't want to take all the time. I just want to do what you wrote and let me go from there. I don't want to miss something. You know, I'm not really a writer per se, but I can write. But I can't put a script together like they can.
Jackee Harry
#85. It's like if a young woman writes it, then it's chick lit. We don't care if she's slaying vampires or working as a nanny or living in Philadelphia. It's chick lit, so who cares? You know what we call what men write? Books.
Jennifer Weiner
#87. So, you know what? I'm not ready to write Gen Y off just yet and neither should you, because I think we're going to grow up just fine. Yeah, it pains me to admit it, but the kids are all right.
Sarra Manning
#88. My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.
Woody Allen
#89. Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know."
Andre Dubus
#90. I feel like, when you turn on the radio and you hear a great song, you know it's a great song, and you sing along. We all know what a great song sounds like, so we all have that instinct, it's just being able to accept your own instincts when you write that song.
Kiesza
#91. My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me.
Paul McDonald
#92. I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.
James Gunn
#93. I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.
Diana Krall
#94. You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.
James Salter
#95. That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.
Ornette Coleman
#96. Traditions of the Shinobi: Those who are active as shinobi should try their best to see, hear, or write down what they should know and, in secret, to collect the information about a place, even while in battle. This will enable you to steal into the enemy territory with tactics.
Yoshie Minami
#97. I characterize myself a little bit as a reluctant filmmaker. I learned from watching my friend in college stay up late at night, at 2 A.M., just to get the lighting right, and I thought, 'You know what, if that's what it's going to be like, I think I'm just going to write,' and I did that.
Tananarive Due
#98. If a happy ending is what you're after, stop the story where it makes you smile, or cry for laughter. In life, it's the rare sweetness to have tears of joy, or painless endings. People feel. It's what they know, and it's why i write.
Mark T. Barnes
#99. You know what's weird, I just write to write, with no intention, I just write.
Tommy Lee
#100. Folk like to pretend they know everything about the world. Rich folk especially. Maps are great for that. [ ... ] You don't have blanks on your map, so the folks who draw them shade in a piece and write, 'The Eld.' You might as well burn a hole right through the map for what good that does.
Patrick Rothfuss
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
