Ngaio Marsh Quotes

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.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

The secret of successful writing lies in striking the right keys on the typewriter.

It's not a college degree that makes a writer. The great thing is to have a story to tell.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.

Writing is above all a question of instinct.

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.

I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.

You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning.

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

I don't write. I usually look for material by other people. Sometimes I change things or adapt things but I don't write from scratch. I wish I had that ability.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.

When you're a writer, you have to have the passion and the skill and the craft. It's not just enough to have the passion. You've gotta have all three.

No one can write like Cheryl Strayed.

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.