Willa Cather Quotes

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

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'

And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

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.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.

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

I never thought I could write fiction.

And writing I think is a gift that you have, the same as acting, in a way.

I always knew that I was tremendously creative. I recited love poems, I wrote stories and I got excellent grades in every subject, except for maths.

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.

You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

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.

Celeste Ng is such a gifted writer.

When I was 17, I rewrote the songs for a musicalized version of 'Love's Labour's Lost.'

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Technology will never rescue anyone from being a bad poet, but if you're good, it has the potential to do a lot of exciting things.

This may sound pretentious, but I don't like being thought of as 'the Metal Gear guy.' There's a lot more I can do.

Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

I think that there has been a slow recognition that there's a mind at work here, and there's a skill and some bit of artistry, and that I could probably do other things. Otherwise, I don't know that I would've been given the opportunity to do Paris, Je T'Aime.

In abandoning the vagueness of the sketch the artist shows more of his personality by revealing the range but also the limitations of his talent.

Everyone who has any talent at all in sketching, painting, sculpturing or carving, should have the opportunity to use that talent. The expression is important for the person, and can tremendously enrich the lives of other people. What can you do?