Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I think comedy is the hardest actual form of writing there is.

I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.

I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.

I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.

I feel more comfortable writing firmly comedic or slightly comedic stuff.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

There is poetry in fiction. If you cannot see it and feel it when you write, you need to step back and examine what you are doing wrong. If you have not figured out how to write a simple declarative sentence and make it sing with that poetry, you are not yet ready to write an entire book.

I love to write humor. If I could make a living doing it that is all I would write.

I think it's that much harder to make a good comedy than it is straight and apparently serious.

If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.

My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

No one can write like Cheryl Strayed.

Writing a book is hard. It turns out, writing a second book is twice as hard.

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.

I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.

All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.

I don't think I could form my writing into scripts or novels. It's so sporadic. My writing's pretty poor. I often think, "Who's this for?" Sometimes it's impressions of the day or my life, or it's fiction. Sometimes it's about things I want to remember, or I try to write in really awful French.

I just write what I think is good and keep it at a thousand words.