Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

After finishing my undergraduate work at the University of Iowa, where I took creative writing classes taught by Writer's Workshop students, I applied to half a dozen MFA writing programs.

Luckily, I'm not a stand-up comedian, so I don't get the fear of standing on stage in front of a dead audience: my humorous pieces have to make it past an editor before they get exposed to the public.

Good writers are of necessity rare.

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

I think more talented writers should get involved in the industry, yes, of course. But that doesn't presuppose that those writers have to be novelists or screenwriters.

Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.

A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

My book sales make 'real writers' possible.

Oddly enough, I never studied writing. I studied almost everything except writing.

I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels - horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor.

Sean's a great, great writer.

My father, Leo Henry Brown, really was talented - he could write. He had a gift, and he had a great, sly humor.

I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch, who told me the same thing over and over again: Persist. Read, write, and improve: tell your stories.

Carmiel Banasky, a writer like no other, is a talent to watch.

There are some incredibly gifted writers in the world. You can count them on a hand. They're blessed, and they've worked at their craft, but there's very few.

I think the writing skills of actors are sometimes underestimated.

I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.

I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.

Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods.

Nobody can write stories like Malayalam writers.

I became a poet in Pittsburgh. When I lived in the South, I was a basketball player and primarily a jock. An English teacher essentially suggested that I send the poems that I'd been writing - really just for him - to a few programs, so that when I wound up in Pittsburgh, it's where I figured out that I could actually be a poet.