Richard Bach Quotes

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.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: 'Stop vamping.' It has remained a caution.

I've found that writers who don't read really can't write.

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

No one can help you write. No one can teach you how to write.

There's no such thing as a folk writer. There's no such thing as somebody who's never read a book before suddenly sitting down one day and writing one. You have to learn how to captivate a reader. Right? And I don't mean you have to go to school for it. But if you're - if you pay attention, you can learn it by reading books. And so I feel like I learned a lot by reading books.

read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

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

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

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

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

Favorite subject? I would have to say creative writing.

I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

Writing is a great love of mine.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

I have grown in my writing and I care about it now and I know how important it is to write stuff.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

There's a lot of young authors out there, and people do seem to forget: in order to write well, you do need to have some experience.

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.