Montesquieu Quotes

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

If you write with passion in your own style, you will make a place for yourself

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

I think you can't help but write in your own voice.

I would like to be able to write in my own voice.

The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own.

Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends.

Write the poem only you can write.

I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

I don't chase what I hear on the radio. I try not to compete with anybody.

I love to write. I used to be a math teacher. And I like the idea that other people could write about the same subjects, but no one would write it just the way I do. It's very individual: a child could write the same story as somebody else, but it wouldn't come out the same.

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.