Tracy Kidder Quotes

Write the best book you can, the one that demands to be written, no matter what genre it is. Even a trend the trades tell you has gone stale can be revitalized by a superb piece of writing. It'll never be revitalized by someone jumping on a trend bandwagon.

There's no such thing as easy, but it's easier when a script is good.

It's really hard to talk about writing, and I'm usually conscious if I'm misleading people or misleading the questioner, because the problem with writing is the next line.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that.

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

There aren't a lot of 'Aha!' moments in writing.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.

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.

It takes me ages to write stuff.

Nobody sits down and says, 'Well, I'm going to write a bad book.' They sit down to write a great book, but it doesn't always turn out like that. The writer may do his best and still write a so-so book, and other times, it just flows easily. But I don't know how you can control that.

It's always struck me as unfair that writing has so little sensation when it's going well.

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.

No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

It's easy to write a good column if you've got good information. It's hard if you have to depend on style alone. I suppose there are people who can get away with styling on a regular basis. I'm not one of them. You're probably not, either.

I continue to wish that writing were easier, that it would flow out completely perfect with no need for revisions.

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.

There's the occasional script that just hammers you, that you can't shower off.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.