Literary Talent Quotes

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.

I didn't have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

A man of letters never objects to a slum. He sharpens his pen there.

Intelligence alone can't make a good writer and style alone can't make a good writer - that is, not a really important or significant writer - but the two things together make a really good writer.

My dad is a great writer. Naturally talented, naturally charming. He embodies that back-in-the-day cool.

My mother is a poet/novelist, and my father was a pianist and cook. Both artists who colored my personality and brain in ways I'm still discovering!

You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.

The general public doesn't expect romance authors to be Harvard graduates. Which is funny, because there are actually quite a lot of us. But this disconnect means that journalists see me as an interesting story. The tricky part is making sure they understand that there are many, many talented writers who don't have 'fancy' educations.

Even so, sometimes I wish I did have a little bit more flair in my language.

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

You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.

The lawyer refused to tell me my brother's name, and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I: someone brilliant without even trying.

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years.

I don't think I'm like Shakespeare.

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

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.