Noah Hawley Quotes

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.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

Bernard Shaw said that when you copy yourself, you know you've got style. And I feel that if you can write like you write, then you are true to yourself. And it's not an easy thing to do - it's a disgustingly difficult thing to do.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

Most fiction writers are driven to find their own 'voice,' but I am more interested in the voices of others.

You can only write your own vision.

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

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

It’s so important to create in your own voice, to hold onto what makes you unique, and have faith in your vision.

Every writer knows that when you're imitating somebody - you know, you're sounding like Faulkner - you're doing pretty good, but your life in Hoboken isn't Faulkneresque. So you get that kind of shortfall between the actual experience of the writer and the things he's hungry to express and the voice itself.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I prefer writing originals.

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

It is easy to club people together, but there are bound to be influences of authors you've read. I grew up reading fast paced authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, but to say I'm one of them isn't true; my style is intrinsically my own.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.