David McCullough Quotes

When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.

Writing is the litmus paper of thoughtthe very center of schooling.

In school, writing was the only thing that really came naturally to me, but it wasn't until college that I realized that I could do it for more than just fun.

The pen is very quick for getting stuff from your brain to the page. I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page.

Ideas? My head is full of them, one after the other, but they serve no purpose there. They must be put down on paper, one after the other.

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

I have this belief that if you have an idea, and you have to write it down to remember it, then it can't be a great idea.

A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.

Writing is the supreme solace.

I'm not happy unless I have a pen in my hand, it's really that simple.

Anyone who doesn't read doesn't have any business writing.

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

I try to write an essay every time I speak.

I love to write. English is my favorite subject in school.

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

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.

Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

My focus has always been on the work - that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That's where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.

Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

I'm very comfortable writing.