Paullina Simons Quotes

I'm drawn to writers with skill sets I don't have.

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

I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer.

I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

I think you can be taught to write. You can't be taught to be a good writer. For that, you have to bring something to it, yourself, something that can't be given to you.

Like most writers, I read deeply into the genre in which I write.

I never think that any writer can teach someone how to write.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best.

I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.

I write what's given me to write.

Reading Stephen King's book, On Writing, was like being cornered and forced to have a long, drawn out mental enema.

I'm here because of what I write. Obviously, I must know something.

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

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.

If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.

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

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.

I don't care about writing really.

The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.