Jason Isbell Quotes

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

As a writer, you look for inspiration wherever you can get it.

I think writers are observers and watchers. We always have our ears open and eyes open, so I might see something in everyday life that inspires me. And I think that's probably more than anything else. Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

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

The reason there's no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn't have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.

You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

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

I tell my writing students that everything is material; just pay attention.

I prefer writing originals.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

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

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

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 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.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

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.

I am always trying to write.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.