Allan Sloan Quotes

Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

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

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

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.

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.

You have to go where the good writing is.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

Just because someone has stylistic limitations doesn't necessarily make them a worse writer.

I just keep following the good writing. I'm not good enough to make bad writing look good. Some people can, and I admire them for it, but I cannot. I will go down with the ship.

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

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

Good writers are of necessity rare.

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren't.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

I never think that any writer can teach someone how to write.

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

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.