Ben Jonson Quotes

If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on learning to write and to speak before an audience . Nothing is more important than the abillity to communicate effectively.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

Reading is more important than writing.

Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

Writing is a workout, just like going for a run!

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.

The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.

I went to college, but I learned to write by reading - and writing.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

I always encourage people in the early parts of their career to focus on writing. If you can communicate clearly, if you can articulate a thought, if you can write a great story, then you're going to be successful.

I'm a big reader. And I take a lot of pictures, do a lot of writing.

Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That's the best way to learn.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you can teach them that they can make their own voices more effective by being able to communicate more clearly and forcefully. It makes people feel more capable when they can write - for instance to make a request - of a politician - and when they are able to receive a reply.

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.

Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.