David Mamet Quotes

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

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

It takes a long, long time to write what I do write.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

If you're a writer, you're always working.

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

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

Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

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

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.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I've always been a very prolific writer.

I never thought I was very good at developing material. I grew up at the BBC where they sent you scripts.

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

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

Writing has to support itself.

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

You know, writing is really difficult, and it takes a real patience and a skill. I don't know if I have that. I admire it in others, so much, and I envy it.

All of the most important lessons about writing I learned from my father. He never set out to teach me anything, it would just be something he said casually in conversation.

I don't know how I do it, but I've written about everything. I've written about my shoes.