Writing Talent Quotes

#1. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

Sara Sheridan

#2. I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.

Peter Dinklage

#3. Seriously, I don't consider myself a writer. I don't think I have writing talent. But I will continue to do it.

Charlie Kaufman

#4. The hard fact is that writing is available to readers because of market factors as much as particular writing talent.

Sara Sheridan

#5. I loved to write; in my late teens I had a 'zine. But it wasn't until I went back to school, later on in my 20s, that I actually saw that I had writing talent.

Sonja Sohn

#6. I don't think that writing talent has much to do with where one went to school, or the number of degrees on one's business card, but I do get a bit bristly at the implication that romance authors couldn't possibly be smart enough to get into an Ivy League school.

Julia Quinn

#7. I am just really focused in on what I love doing, but I would be a moron to not take some of my natural talent - I'm not saying I'm that talented, but I have enough acting and writing talent to go.

Jen Kirkman

#8. Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren't.

Haruki Murakami

#9. There are so many ready to write (poor fools!) for the honor and glory of the thing, and there are so many ready to take advantage of this fact, and withhold from needy talent the moral right to a deserved remuneration.

Fanny Fern

#10. Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Mel Brooks

#11. I find writing for children much easier. I don't mean it's less demanding - you've got to have a talent for it and you've got to work very hard - but you don't have to pull your guts out and lay them on the line in quite the same way as when you're writing for adults.

Lynne Reid Banks

#12. Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.

Truman Capote

#13. The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

#14. To try something longer, I entered a half-hour radio drama contest with the national public broadcaster, CBC. To my surprise, I won. And that opened doors in film and television, because that broadcaster was looking to cultivate new Canadian talent, especially women who could write.

Karen Walton

#15. We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.

Julia Cameron

#16. I have no special talent, you know. I never took a writing course before I began to write.

Patricia Reilly Giff

#17. Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#18. If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics ... but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.

Philip Pullman

#19. But I hate things all fiction ... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric - and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

Lord Byron

#20. I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.

Oscar Wilde

#21. Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.

Witold Gombrowicz

#22. When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.

Honore De Balzac

#23. 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

#24. A young pianist & composer who has demonstrated an exceptional creativity, in both his playing & his writing, as well as showing us all, his very strong commitment & motivation to aim for high musical goals. Talent like his is rare.

Steve Lacy

#25. Readership is highly dependent upon format and distribution as much as it is on content.

Sara Sheridan

#26. We often read with as much talent as we write.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#27. Because I've gotten older, I worry that there will be a steep decline in my talent, but I promise not to let the same thing happen to my passion for writing.

Pat Conroy

#28. Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.

Brenda Ueland

#29. I don't think I'll ever stop writing. I write almost every day. I'd write plays even if they were never done again. You're at the mercy of whatever talent you have.

Horton Foote

#30. However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#31. Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.

Jessamyn West

#32. I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.

John Grisham

#33. I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.
[Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]

Cormac McCarthy

#34. 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

#35. Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

Elizabeth George

#36. Writing is not a talent. It is an affliction.

Mike Engleman

#37. It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.

Johnny Cash

#38. I have tried to explore the little talent I have for writing.

Cyril Cusack

#39. I guess I have a talent for humiliation, a place within me that experience can't reach, which is terrible in real life but something that comes in handy in writing. It seems as though humiliation has become a career for me.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

#40. A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

Gore Vidal

#41. You think you have no 'talent'? Write anyway. lots of people with 'talent' don't actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have 'talent.

M. Kirin

#42. Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing.

Martin Amis

#43. I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.

Al Franken

#44. The more you doubt your talent and strive to improve, the better the writer.

Stephanie Ayers

#45. I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that's all.

Anna Kamienska

#46. For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music.

Jay-Z

#47. Persistence is worth at least as much as talent. The writing life is not a series of gentle encouragements. It's more like a series of brutal kicks in the teeth. Those who grow a thick enough skin to persevere, survive. Those who do not, do not.

Gardner Dozois

#48. I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

Samantha Morton

#49. Tengo did not know for certain whether he wanted to be a professional novelist, nor was he sure he had the talent to write fiction. What he did know was that he could not help spending a large part of every day writing fiction. To him, writing was like breathing.

Haruki Murakami

#50. There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.

Flannery O'Connor

#51. Writing is writing. It's an abiding, wonderful talent, craft, gift that stays with you your whole life. And you can go in different forms, and you can try them. Look at me: I'm writing novels because I found something I love because I tried it.

Adriana Trigiani

#52. Talent is a faucet. When it is on, one must write. Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

Jean Anouilh

#53. It takes more talent to write music, but it takes more courage to write lyrics.

Johnny Mercer

#54. Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.

Keren Ann

#55. Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

Stephen King

#56. Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

#57. The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.

Bill McKibben

#58. There's no "magic secret"; writing is like everything else; ten percent inspiration or talent, and ninety percent hard work. Persistence; keeping at it till you get there. As Agnes de Mille said, it means working every day - bored, tired, weary, or with a fever of a hundred and two.

Marion Zimmer Bradley

#59. There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.

Anne Lamott

#60. If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Anne Frank

#61. Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them.

Anthony Powell

#62. Writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training

Robert A. Heinlein

#63. I never begin my writings with talent. i begin them with strong emotions and liquor. they finish with talent.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#64. You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.

Michael Chabon

#65. The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy

#66. You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov

#67. On Writing Poetry: Take everyday words beyond everyday talent and write them alive.

C.J. Heck

#68. I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition.

William Monahan

#69. Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available.

Dorothy Parker

#70. Success and talent aren't even in the same neighborhood.

Jenny Trout

#71. I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

William Faulkner

#72. Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke.

Paul Fussell

#73. I write because I love it, not because I excel at it. But because I write, I shall slowly excel at it.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#74. Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

Peter Carey

#75. Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right?
Sam: No.
Toby: Somewhere in this building ... is our talent.

Aaron Sorkin

#76. I wish writing was a talent that I had. I've tried. Unfortunately, I'm just not talented in the writing department. But, if I was, I would just write complicated roles for women because there's a lack of them.

Eva Mendes

#77. It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

Flannery O'Connor

#78. A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas.

Jean De La Bruyere

#79. Perfectionism, of course, was something which even as a young man he had come to see as the innermost essence of talent.

Thomas Mann

#80. Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

Marjane Satrapi

#81. Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#82. Like other women writers of my class, I am expected to tame my talent to suit the comfort of my family.

Kamala Suraiyya Das

#83. Some people I see are so talented that they are just wasting their time on writing at Facebook. Talent must be productive..

Himmilicious

#84. By and large I think art is made by people who have discipline married to talent in sufficiently large amounts to work even if they don't feel like it. Anybody can get maudlin and decide to write poetry at 11 at night; the question is, can you do it at 8:30 on a Monday morning..?

Clive Barker

#85. Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#86. Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

Donald Hall

#87. I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

Kristan Higgins

#88. Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.

Jules Renard

#89. You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.

Joan Didion

#90. I think I went more toward writing because that's my talent. I don't think I was a great performer ... And I like being behind the scenes a little bit.

Harvey Mason Jr.

#91. I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

George R R Martin

#92. 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

#93. Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Carla Bley

#94. I hear Jerry Falwell every Sunday here talking about the devil and Hollywood ... I'm gonna write him a letter. Hollywood wasn't built on filth and dirt - it was built on talent.

Mickey Rooney

#95. Your mind is a book; God is the pen.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#96. I have been fighting writing songs for a long time. People keep telling me I should write, and other writers have offered to write with me, and to be honest, it's not something I've ever really had a passion for - plus I wasn't sure I had the talent to do it!

Martina Mcbride

#97. I think talent is like a water table under the earth - you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

Natalie Goldberg

#98. Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.

William Zinsser

#99. A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don't have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren't going to finish a book.

Nora Roberts

#100. Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.

Lisa Cron