Good Writing Quotes by Michael Pena, Louis D. Brandeis, Donald Spoto, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Carrie Coon, Charles Caleb Colton and many others.
I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It’s what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid.
Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.
The secret of good writing is telling the truth.
Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.
Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it’s OK if you only make one point, as long as it’s a good one.
The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, вЂDON’T THINK!’
The thing about good writing is it has a music to it.
The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.
The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.
Good writing is about telling the truth.
As an actor, my main focus is finding good writing and attacking a good role.
All good writing comes out of aloneness.
Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.
If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don’t even know it, who wouldn’t believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.
The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along.
Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.
Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.
I’ve grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.
You just can’t make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it’s almost done.
There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I’m kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn’t , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing.
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
Writing, or at least good writing, is an outgrowth of that urge to use language to communicate complex ideas and experiences between people. And that’s true whether you’re reading Shakespeare or bad vampire fiction-reading is always an act of empathy. It’s always an imagining of what it’s like to be someone else.
I’m curious about writing in the age of online publishing. Because nobody cares about good writing online.
Good writing is always new.
I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.
I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word […] – a jouuuuuurney.
I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.
My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don’t care where it is.
As an actor, you are in a unique position because you’re not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.
Good writing is really meaningful, and it’s one of the – it’s still one of the best tools we have to get and capture people’s attention.
I don’t think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings.
Good writing is like a windowpane.
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.
I’m not happy that death is approaching because I like being alive but I’m glad I’ve escaped the two-post-a-day economy of contemporary journalism. Good writing takes time.
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.
I think the benefit of being a writer is that I’m looking for the subtext on the page, because all good writing has subtext. And as a writer, you look at the big scope of things, the big story, rather than just your individual story line, because I think it’s important to know what you’re in and how you fit into it.
You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.
Good writing is rewriting.
I want to keep doing different things. I’d like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it’s about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that’s what’s important
I just keep following the good writing. I’m not good enough to make bad writing look good. Some people can, and I admire them for it, but I cannot. I will go down with the ship.
Good writing is good conversation, only more so.
I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear.
Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you’re a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you’ll write, and you’ll be read.
Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind – -vividly, forcefully.
I get the ideas from everything. Children sometimes think you have to have special experiences to write, but good writing brings out what’s special in ordinary things.
Well, I’ve always been a character actor, you know, and you always get your share of character actors who are bad guys. So it never surprises me. And if it’s good writing, you can find your way into the part well enough.
You have to go where the good writing is.
You can have good writing, but a great actor will make it feel and sound like great writing. You can have great writing, and mediocre actors will make it feel mediocre. Without the actors, you have nothing.
When you recognize good writing and you’re lucky enough to get it, like with Lost, that’s what I follow.
Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.
I’m very driven by writing. Coming from ‘Saturday Night Live,’ because it’s such a writing job, and we all write our parts on the show and create characters, I’m so respectful of good writing.
Good writing is good writing, and I’m so happy when I read it.
I would say that I am proud of my performance from Cracker and I think a lot of that was due to the writing was just so good. It’s so rare that you get such good writing these days but it was awhile ago.
The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
There’s a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you’re trying to express in a novel.
The writer trusts nothing she writes-it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of control. . . . Good writing . . . explodes in the reader’s face. Whenever the writer writes, it’s always three or four or five o’clock in the morning in her head.
Good writing comes from good talent.
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.
There’s not a conspiracy to prevent really good writing from being found You have to have the humility to fail over and over and over.
There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you’ll mostly fall flat on your face, because it’s impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That’s how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It’s hard work.
It goes without saying that a good Catholic novel should be good craftsmanship, good writing skills. The creative person must always be engaged in the long labor of perfecting the tools of his art. Yet the work itself need not be explicitly evangelical in its themes and plots.
Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.
There’s exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing – unless you’re going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you’re an action hero.
Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing.
[Lat., Scibendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.]
[Lat., Scibendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.]
Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
I am a stickler for damn good writing.
Really good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.
There are so many burning issues to be dealt with that it’s completely understandable and natural that a character is struggling with these issues themselves. In that struggle, you inform the audience. The thing about this writing is that it’s very easy to learn. Good writing always is.
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