V. S. Naipaul Quotes

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

As a writer, I've always been somebody who's been productive and hustled hard.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

One of the things I learnt over the years is that there is a craft to writing, like there is a craft to acting. I hadn't done my apprenticeship as a writer. I did try to be a writer for hire but I'm not any good at it.

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

Ultimately, you've got to have something to say, so a writer should continue learning things throughout life. But I don't think education makes one a writer.

Writing will remain a passion project.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

To be a dramatic writer takes hard work, talent, and discipline. And that's why I just make up crap.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It's work, and often it's hard work.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

Writing is hard work; it's also the best job I've ever had.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.

There's also a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

I have written ever since I knew mechanically how to do it.

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.