Herbert Spencer Quotes

English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.

I've always been able to write. I've always been able to put a good essay in or say whatever I wanted to say through the pen. That was a gift of mine. I feel like it was what I was meant to do.

Writing is not my forte, but I am good at visualising.

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

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

You become a great writer by writing.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

I have tried to explore the little talent I have for writing.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

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

If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

Poesy must not be drawn by the ears: it must be gently led, or rather, it must lead, which was partly the cause that made the ancient learned affirm it was a divine, and no human skill, since all other knowledges lie ready for any that have strength of wit; a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it.

I'm not the best person at putting words together. I can't give you the melody. But I might inspire somebody.

I didn't set out to write. It was just something I always could do. Teachers would say, 'you really have this gift,' but I just didn't care.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

My whole life I've tried to find the thing I can do that other people can't do, and invest in that, and the one thing I can do is write narratives and build characters. I can do that.

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.