Manuel Puig Quotes

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

I kind of do all of this writing as a way of thinking and learning. I'm sure it's similar to being a journalist: You get to learn, and that's the greatest kind of job.

I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.

Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.

I think I learned a lot from reading in general - even from reading badly written books.

Reading taught me how to write.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

I can't talk about anything or write about anything if I don't understand it. So a lot of the stuff that I go through and a lot of the time that I spend is understanding.

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.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.

I never have found out all I want to know about writing and realize I never will.

I don't think enough journalists read enough - literature, history. You've got to keep reading all through your career.

If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.

Reading changes your perspective and feeds your imagination.

What I love about research is when I'm having a bad day and I can't write, I'll just research some more, I'll learn some more and I'll have better command of the world of the film.

I like to read and understand.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.