Young Writers Quotes - Page 4

• Theater is still a medium which attracts young writers. You'd think that it would be all over by now, with television and film. But it's not.

  Tom Stoppard

  Thinking, Would Be, Television

  Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. February 2, 2009.

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• I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, Desire, Kind

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• Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.

  Don DeLillo

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Men, Advice

  E. B. WHITE (1954). “The SECOND TREE from the CORNER”

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• So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

  John Berryman

  Vanity, Self, Talking

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• If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.

  Andre Gide

  Writing, Refrain, Ifs

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• I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at

  Anne Tyler

  Thinking, Earth, May

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• Young writers should definitely research the current sounds and styles.

  Lamont Dozier

  Style, Sound, Research

  "Legendary Trio Holland-Dozier-Holland Talk About Their Motown Hits, and New Projects". Interview with Dale Kawashima, www.songwriteruniverse.com. 2005.

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• Read Jerrod Edson. He is one of our best young writers.

  David Adams Richards

  Young

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• There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

  J. B. Priestley

  Clever, Genius, Too Much

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• One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an old young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

  Raymond E. Feist

  Thinking, Age, Stories

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• And when you get an eminent journal like Time magazine complaining, as it often has, that to the young writers of today life seems short on rewards and that what they write is a product of their own neuroses, in its silly way the magazine is merely stating the status quo and obvious truth. The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

  William Styron

  Silly, Writing, Today Life

  "Conversations with William Styron".

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• There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

  Jonathan Ames

  Suffering, Young, Comparison

  Jonathan Ames (2007). “I Love You More Than You Know: Essays”, p.48, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I often meet frustrated young writers who say they've only got so far and just can't finish a book. Even if you don't happen to use what you've worked on that day, it has taught you something and you'll be amazed when you might come back to it and use it again.

  Eoin Colfer

  Book, Frustrated, Use

  "Quickfire interview: Eoin Colfer". Interview with Jen Bowden, www.theguardian.com. October 12, 2012.

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• Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

  Tea Obreht

  Encouragement, Taken, Thinking

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• A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.

  Octavia Butler

  Thinking, Way, Facts

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• What the young writer is looking for is not a critic who will slap him on the back and say, 'Greatest thing since O. Henry,' but rather the one who will toss the manuscript down in disgust, with 'You know better than that! It's rotten! Do it all over again!'

  Henry Sydnor Harrison

  Writing, Rotten, Toss

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• As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, 'I was told by one teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure.

  Julia Alvarez

  Mother, Teacher, Writing

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• I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

  John Philip Sousa

  Country, Believe, Giving

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• I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

  George R. R. Martin

  Book, Rocks, Climbing

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• I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

  Irvine Welsh

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

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• It's true that the young who now flock to script writing, or producing and directing, to fulfill the demands of these new devices would, in an earlier period, have been submitting to magazines and working on their first novels. But even in the midst of all these "digital products," the wonder of it is that there are still so many young writers who continue to believe in the venerable print novel as the corridor to fame and fortune.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Believe, Writing, Magazines

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• When I was a kid and a young man I read everything. When I was about 23, I was incredibly lucky in that I wound up with several book review columns, which meant that I had to read huge amounts of stuff that was outside my experience and outside my comfort zone. I think every young writer should be forced to read the kind of stuff they would not normally read for pleasure.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Kids, Men

  Source: www.sffworld.com

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• If I had a script that I was ready to shoot tomorrow, I'd work on it every day until we got into production as soon as possible, but I don't have that script yet, so I'm trying to find and support writers, really young writers and hopefully come across a story that I wanna tell one day.

  Logan Lerman

  Support, Trying, One Day

  "Logan Lerman on ‘Indignation’, His Intense Preparation, and Why Directing Is His Ultimate Goal". Interview with Adam Chitwood, collider.com. July 28, 2016.

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