Fred Allen Quotes

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

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.

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.

Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.

Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there.

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

The only thing that makes me crazier than writing is not writing.

When talent fails, indignation writes the verse.

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.

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.

I'm very comfortable writing.

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

If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.

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

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."

I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.

You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

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

And I could write it better than you ever felt it.

Right now with blogs and the flood of internet access, a multitude of aspiring writers think they're ready for prime time. They're not. Be great. Read. Write. Bust your ass. Learn and find your voice. As hard as you think it is, it's a hundred times harder.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.