Tim Cahill Quotes

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

A.J. Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I'm one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.

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.

Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

There are seldom more than a couple of students in any workshop who seem natural writers.

There's many times this year I've sat back and thought, I'm making a living from making things up. It's the only skill I have so I've been really lucky.

Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren't.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

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

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

I'm very lucky to be in projects that have such skilled writing in them.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Just because someone has stylistic limitations doesn't necessarily make them a worse writer.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

Sean's a great, great writer.

I didn't set out to write. It was just something I always could do. Teachers would say, 'you really have this gift,' but I just didn't care.

My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don't care where it is.

I've always been able to write. I've always been able to put a good essay in or say whatever I wanted to say through the pen. That was a gift of mine. I feel like it was what I was meant to do.

I always had a gift with writing. I can really write. I always felt like I can write movies or somehow get into that.

George is so prolific as a writer.

Writing is the only thing I am good for.