Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.

Ultimately, you've got to have something to say, so a writer should continue learning things throughout life. But I don't think education makes one a writer.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

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

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

One of the things I learnt over the years is that there is a craft to writing, like there is a craft to acting. I hadn't done my apprenticeship as a writer. I did try to be a writer for hire but I'm not any good at it.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

Writers are nerds.

It's very hard to tell somebody how to write when they're so good, and they're a brilliant writer and a really good guy.

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.

I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

Writers are so important.

To be a dramatic writer takes hard work, talent, and discipline. And that's why I just make up crap.

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.