Bad Writing Quotes

• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

  Don Roff

  Writing

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• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

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• It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Littles, Good Writing

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• Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.

  Ben Hecht

  Writing, Views, Castles

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• You can't fake it. Bad writing is a gift.

  Richard Le Gallienne

  Writing, Fake

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• Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Writing, Quality, Language

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• It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

  Will Shetterly

  Book, Writing, Firsts

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Odds, Stories

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny, Sarcastic, Writing

  "Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843".

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  The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

  Tom Waits

  Writing, Suffering, Quality

  "Strange Innocence". Interview with J. T. LeRoy, July 2001.

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

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Good And Bad, Left

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.363, Simon and Schuster

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• There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Language, Ashamed

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Aleksandar Hemon". Interview with Rachel Dewoskin, therumpus.net. April 14, 2013.

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• Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Art, Writing, Advice

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• The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Character, Land

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• Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Epic, Study

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• It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

  Edna Ferber

  Writing, Reflection, Tools

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• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Book, Reading

  Esquire, Dec. 1934

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

  Dan Harmon

  Hate, Writing, Doe

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• Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words - the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Writing, Long, Immortality

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• Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

  P. D. James

  Writing, Discrimination, Contagious

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

  John Ciardi

  Writing, Mean, Men

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• Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.

  George Henry Lewes

  Lying, Writing, Successful

  George Henry Lewes (1875). “On Actors and the Art of Acting”, p.185, London Smith, Elder 1875.

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• I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Roots, Magic

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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• Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  "Living In The Present Is A Disorder". Interview with R.U. Sirius, www.wired.com. April 8, 2013.

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