Mary Balogh Quotes

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.

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

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

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.

It's very hard to tell somebody how to write when they're so good, and they're a brilliant writer and a really good guy.

I always had a thing for writing. Even when I was in school, I was always good at writing.

Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego.

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

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

I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.

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.

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

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

Writing can't be taught.

If you write really good material, the rest just falls into place. There's really no trick to it.

I've always been a very prolific writer.

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.

I never thought I was very good at developing material. I grew up at the BBC where they sent you scripts.

I'm here because of what I write. Obviously, I must know something.

A lot of people ask me, 'Are you born a writer?' And I don't think it's necessarily true. I just think what you either have or you don't is this ability to see something that's complex and worth talking about.