Teju Cole Quotes

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

I prefer my writing to do all the talking for me.

I'm such a first-person writer.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

That's the secret to anything we write. You have to bring your experience to it. Otherwise, how do you expect anyone else to connect to it?

I learned all I have to do is sing the best music I know how and put on the best show I know how and just relax with it and people enjoy it.

A baby writer should take inspiration from her predecessors but also find ways to tell her own stories in her own way.

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

If you know the voice you're writing for it's such a shortcut. It's such a catalyst to creating the kind of energy you want.

Like Hemingway and Faulkner, but in an entirely different mode, Fitzgerald had that singular quality without which a writer is not really a writer at all, and that is a voice, a distinct and identifiable voice. This is really not the same thing as a style; a style can be emulated, a voice cannot, and the witty, rueful, elegaic voice gives his work its bright authenticity.

Finding one's voice - or creating a narrative voice that has the power to carry your story - is the hardest part.

Every writer has his own voice. Other than that I'm always trying to do change-ups and publishers haven't always been happy about that.

What I'd like to be is a unique writer who's different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers'.

It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.

Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.

Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior.

Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.