Creative Writing Quotes - Page 5

• A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time.

  Richard Hugo

  Teacher, Writing, Creative

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• I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Motivation, Writing, People

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.98, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.

  Andre Dubus

  Writing, Creativity, Thinking

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• There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

  Fannie Hurst

  Pain, Writing, Color

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• From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.

  Garry Disher

  Teaching, Writing, Years

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• Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.

  Joanna Newsom

  Writing, College, Years

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The best and only true history we have. Everyone interested in creative writing should know this book.

  Tony Ardizzone

  Book, Writing, Creative

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• I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

  Peter Coyote

  Writing, College, San Francisco

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• I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Teacher, Writing, School

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• I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.

  Ian Rankin

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Paperback Q&A: Ian Rankin on The Impossible Dead". www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2012.

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• I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice.

  Kate Zambreno

  Teaching, Writing, Practice

  "The naming is a political act, the writing is a political act, a revolt against disappearance". Interview with Noah Charney, logger.believermag.com. November 3, 2014.

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• A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

  Jay McInerney

  Teacher, Writing, Two

  "Novelist Jay McInerney on Getting Your Novel Underway". Interview with Anne Bowling, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

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• I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

  Charles Frazier

  Taken, Writing, Class

  "Week three: Charles Frazier on writing Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2011.

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• The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

  Dave Eggers

  Writing, College, Class

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• I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

  Garrett Hedlund

  Teacher, Writing, Creative

  "Q&A: Garrett Hedlund 'On the road,' on illegal drugs, getting naked and Twihards" by Kase Wickman, www.mtv.com. December 18, 2012.

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• I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Teaching, Writing, Mean

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• These kids will make you cry, laugh... They make you feel all kinds of emotions through their writings and they share a lot with me, as an instructor, that they might not normally share with other people because they are young artists and they need a platform for pulling that stuff out.

  Clinton D. Powell

  Kids, Writing, Artist

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• Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.

  A. E. Hotchner

  Flower, Writing, Two

  A. E. Hotchner (2010). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Opportunity, Class

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• I was an A student and I liked creative writing.

  Trisha Yearwood

  Writing, Creative, Students

  "Trisha's Southern Comfort". Interview with Jancee Dunn, www.redbookmag.com. August 14, 2008.

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• I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.

  Kate Zambreno

  Philosophy, Writing, Thinking

  "The naming is a political act, the writing is a political act, a revolt against disappearance". Interview With Noah Charney, logger.believermag.com. November 3, 2014.

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• Never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you've seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That's good practice, but it isn't creative writing.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Practice, Giving

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• hough I was creative, I also liked math and science. At Knox College, I studied creative writing and earned a degree in chemistry, thinking I would attend medical school. Ultimately, I decided that a career in nursing would allow more time for pursuing other creative interests. While I worked as an RN, I wrote stories inspired by my patients, designed t-shirts, and made hand-painted sandals.

  Mary Pope Osborne

  School, Writing, Math

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

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• Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

  David Knopfler

  Writing, Space, Effort

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