Writing Competence Quotes

Generals who can write always make me nervous.

As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.

A.J. Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I'm one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.

I'm older than my sister so I started writing first. I started writing at school. I was always top of my class in composition, essays, English Lit and all of that.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write.

That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

I don't write. I couldn't even fill a team sheet in.

People don't think I can construct a sentence, let alone write a script.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Just because someone has stylistic limitations doesn't necessarily make them a worse writer.

The fact that we write about it doesn't mean we play better than ordinary players at all.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I'm not the slowest writer that you know.

While I wasn't very good at much else in school, in my creative-writing classes or when we had to do some writing in my English classes, I tended to do better at it.

There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.

Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

I know I can cut it with any songwriters in the world.

The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one

I associated excellence in writing with New York City.

In writing I found something I could do at least as well as my peers, if not better.