Ann Patchett Quotes

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

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

Well, I'm a writer by nature, and I got a little bit - a little taste of a daily fast-paced writing job, writing career, and I loved it.

I write fast. I'm one of the lucky ones.

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

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

It's a long process for me since I am unable to write a script faster.

I always write tons of different styles.

I am not a trained writer.

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

I ain't no author, man... my writing skills are not of 'New York Times' best-seller quality, trust and believe it ain't. My vocabulary ain't.

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Learning to write comics is, in fact, so bloody difficult because it's such a weird form that it does actually make you a bit more adaptable for other forms.

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me.

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.

I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.

I'm not the slowest writer that you know.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.

I think you can be taught to write. You can't be taught to be a good writer. For that, you have to bring something to it, yourself, something that can't be given to you.

The real trouble with the writing game is that no general rule can be worked out for uniform guidance, and this applies to sales as well as to writing.