Tracy Kidder Quotes

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level.

I love piecing together intricate thoughts that people find compulsively readable and they can't put down.

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.

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

Like with anything, good writing suggest itself pretty strongly.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

I try to write in a way where you care deeply what the next paragraph will be. I hear the rhythm of prose and that, to me, distinguishes great writing from ordinary writing. By the way, I don't even claim that I'm good. I claim that I value it.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.

I want to make sure that my writing grips the reader from the word 'go.'

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

The simple idiot's advice I give to screenwriters who say they want to sell a screenplay is, 'Write good.'

Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.

There are two tests that we [writers] have for all of our writing: So What? and Who Cares? There is an answer to both. The answer to Who Cares is that a reader cares, if the writing is good. The answer to So What is that these ideas give us completely new understanding, change our sense of who we [people] are and why we're here [on this planet].

Once something is well-written, then everything else is gravy.

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.