Writing Mastery Quotes

I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit.

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

Poems that come swiftly are usually the ones that you keep.

Writing is like a sport. If you don't practice, you don't get any better.

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

They say you hit your stride as a writer at about 50. I'm hoping to do that.

Irene Nemirovsky was a prolific writer punctiliously devoted to her craft.

When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

Gather knowledge about the craft of writing. Immerse yourself in the art of it. Then write. Write yourself silly. Write yourself mad. Write yourself blind. Trust the excitement that builds within you when the idea is good and the writing is superb. You can do it, but that's the hell of it as well as the exultation of it. You have to do it.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.

Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice

Didn't you know I'm going to be the greatest, most entertaining author and artist in the world? Well, don't feel badly, I didn't either!