Learning How To Write Quotes

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story. ~ John Green

Let every young man and woman be warned by my example, and understand that good handwriting is a necessary part of education. I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write. Let the child learn his letters by observation as he does different objects, such as flowers, birds, etc., and let him learn handwriting only after he has learnt to draw objects. He will then write a beautifully formed hand. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself. ~ Harper Lee

Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven't gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course, everyone wants to own copyrights. ~ Hal David

I remember in my early 20s when I felt I couldn't live past 30. I was learning how to write. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me. ~ Carl Sandburg

At the end of my second year I understood something I'd been incubating for several months: that my law studies were of no interest or use to me whatsoever, for my only obsession was reading fiction and, finally, learning how to write it. ~ Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Reading the word and learning how to write the word so one can later read it are preceded by learning how to write the world, that is having the experience of changing the world and touching the world. ~ Paulo Freire

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story. ~ Lucy Hale

I think I've just gotten better at learning how to write a song. ~ Jonny Lang

After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to come back to Earthsea and write the next three books in another and newer tradition: that of questioning, rather than accepting, the gendering of power as male. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

There've been times when I have existential conversations with myself, and I've thought about leaving and trying to apply my education better. But ultimately it doesn't really matter. Learning how to write, learning how to write papers and structure, that's been very helpful for writing. ~ Rashida Jones

I'm trying to get in the habit of, you know, picking up a book and learning how to write my feelings down, not my feelings but my thoughts, about things, and hopefully I'll moving toward the writing and directing thing soon. ~ Corey Haim

I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A student can win twelve letters at a university without learning how to write one. ~ Robert M. Hutchins

I always run into these Ph.D.s. They write and write and write about sustainable development. Then these guys ask me, 'But, how do you do it?' They are scared to death to do anything. ~ Jaime Lerner

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how? ~ Robert Bringhurst

I think I subconsciously put myself in these situations where the girlfriend isn't pleased with me. I'm useless as a boyfriend. That's how I managed to write all these songs. ~ Tom Odell

And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can't do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can't stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere - an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers - and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people - from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: ~ Arkady Strugatsky

Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. - ~ Stephen King

I just don't know how to write a love letter. What can you say to a girl that shows you really like her?"
"How about, enclosed please find a cookie? ~ Charles M. Schulz

All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. ~ Ray Bradbury

I was very young, maybe five. The opera was very ... I was attracted to opera to the point that I think it's the reason I started to write music for films. I never studied. There are film and music school that teach you how to write music. I never studied that. But the influence of opera, which is a combination of storyline, visuals, staging, plus music ... that was perhaps the best school I could have had. That's what gave me the idea of coming to Hollywood to write music for films. ~ Lalo Schifrin

I'm learning how to keep my identity and personal life sacred. It's a matter of knowing my limits. I don't have to give everything that's asked of me. ~ Mary Lambert

I'm used to always being different, in any context. People always want to know how I grew up, so I just say I grew up Muslim. That's the truth. Two Muslim girls can write me two extremely different letters - and they do. Some are very supportive, and some question what I do. ~ Noureen DeWulf

Someone should write a book about how Alice Liddell from Wonderland falls in love with Huckleberry Finn. I might rather want to read that book. ~ Heather Lyons

Remaining vigilant toward this ever-present threat means constantly learning how better to protect ourselves. But primarily it reminds us that we must fight and win the war on terror, so that we do not have to fight it here in America. ~ Mark Kennedy

A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history. ~ Natasha Trethewey

Write down everything you can think of, no matter how stupid it seems. I always write down my thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes good things come out of it, and I'll find an idea to develop into a song, so my best advice is to try and draw inspiration from everyday things. ~ Daya

Perhaps, then, one of the first steps in "learning how to make peace" and "finding nonviolent alternatives" is to develop peace churches that nurture unconventional reflexes and free our imaginations to explore creative possibilities. ~ Stuart Murray

I'd set out to write a book about how we learn to trust our own experience in the face of confusion, doubt, and anxiety. What I ended up with is the story of how we love each other in spite of immense limitations ~ Heather Sellers

Someone told me that their child was diagnosed with ADHD. They wanted to know how I handle the day to day. It's hard on me but it's harder on them. I cry sometimes which means they probably do to. I worry that the world will never give them the chance they deserve but I am. I get frustrated when they are treated badly but they feel worse. I keep trying, I keep learning, and I keep telling their story. Just love your child and don't give up. They need you to be the person that understands. ~ Brenda Lochinger

Make a list for how to have a good day. First thing in the morning, write down what you are going to eat, the errands you are going to run, the bills you are going to pay. Don't extend this list beyond one day. Include on it at least one thing you want to accomplish that you have been putting off. As you write, check in on your comfort level. Everything on your list should lead to the same result: you will feel good today. ~ Deepak Chopra

Isn't it remarkable how everyone who knew [D.H.] Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why, he's had more books written about him than any writer since Byron! ~ Aldous Huxley

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end

of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds
of women - those you write poems about

and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction

lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast

as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don't have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power

never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,

as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed
antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long

regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don't know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light

of a candle being blown out tr ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

Our role as gardeners is to choose, plant and tend the best seeds within the garden of our consciousness. Learning to look deeply at our consciousness is our greatest gift and our greatest need, for there lie the seeds of suffering and of love, the very roots of our being, of who we are. Mindfulness ... is the guide and the practice by which we learn how to use the seeds of suffering to nourish the seeds of love. ~ Nhat Hanh

My father ... never required me to study anything, but he knew how to inspire in me a great desire for knowledge. Before learning to read, my greatest pleasure was to listen to passages from Buffon's natural history. I constantly requested him to read me the history of animals and birds ... ~ Andre Marie Ampere

Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the future you will read it and understand what happened to our family.

Together, your mother and I have created and nurtured an unbreakable bond that has transformed us into an unlikely team. A Chicano from El Paso, Texas. A Jew from Concord, Massachusetts. I want you to know your mother. She has given me hope when I have felt none; she has offered me kindness when I have been consumed by bitterness. I believe I have taught her how to be tough and savvy and how to achieve what you want around obstacles and naysayers.

Our hope is that the therapies we are discussing with her doctors will defeat her cancer. But a great and ominous void has suddenly engulfed us at the beginning of our life as a family. This void suffocates me. ~ Sergio Troncoso

Transparency is all about letting in and embracing new ideas, new technology and new approaches. No individual, entity or agency, no matter how smart, how old, or how experienced, can afford to stop learning. ~ Gina McCarthy

If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were. ~ Ray Bradbury

I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives. ~ Richard Dawkins

We are made for art ... The moment Maddy took up the tendril phrase, Els knew she was as dear to him as his own life. Talons gripped his ribs, and he felt a joy bordering on panic. He needed to know how this woman would unfold. He needed to write music that would settle into her range like frost on fields. They'd spend their years together, grow old, get sick, die in shared bewilderment. ~ Richard Powers

I don't know when I started to realize that my country's past was incomprehensible and obscure to me, a real shadowy terrain, nor can I remember the precise moment when all that i'd believed so trustworthy and predictable - the place I'd grown up, whose language I speak and customs I know, the place whose past I was taught in school and in university, whose present I have become accustomed to interpreting and pretending I understand - began to turn into a place of shadows out of whcih jumped horrible creatures as soon as we dropped our guard. With time I have come to think that this is the true reason why writers write aboutn the places of childhood and adolescence and even their early touth: you don't write about what you know and understand, and much less do you write because you know and understand, but because you understand that all your knowledge and comprehension is false, a mirage and an illusion, so your books are not, could not be, more than elaborate displays of disorientation: extensive and multifarious declarations of preplexity. All that I thought was so clear, you then think, now turns out to be full of duplicities and hidden intentions, like a friend who betrays us. To that revelation, which is always annoying and often frankly painful, the writer responds in the only way one knows how: with a book. And that's how you try to mitigate your disconcertion, reduce the space between what you don't know and what can be known, and most of all resolve your profound di ~ Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Experience trumps age,' he said. 'We have to find ways to experience because that's how we learn, that's how we know. ~ Iain Reid

I would say I'm a storyteller first, but game making is very wrapped up in how I think of story. If I were to have a story idea, and I decided to write a novel with it instead, I'd have to very consciously de-couple it from gamedom - for example, deliberately add in things that could not be represented in a game scene. ~ Jane Jensen

I marvel at how wildly different each of their stories is. It's proof that our lives were never meant to be cookie-cutter, culturally constructed carbon copies of some ideal. There is no one way to live, love, raise children, arrange a family, run a school, a community, a nation. The norms were created by somebody, and each of us is somebody. We can make our own normal. We can throw out all the rules and write our own. We can build our lives from the inside out. We can stop asking what the world wants from us and instead ask ourselves what we want for our world. We can stop looking at what's in front of us long enough to discover what's inside us. We can remember and unleash the life-changing, relationship-changing, world-changing power of our own imagination. It might take us a lifetime. Luckily, a lifetime is exactly how long we have. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

You're holding a challenge in a fencing club?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?" He pulled on his black pants and the heavy silk green shirt I loved for him to wear because the material seemed to caress hisskin.

No, it's just kind of an incongruous place to hold something so serious as a challenge, isn't it?"

He finished with his shoes, grabbed another towel, and shook it out for me. I made sure Pal still had his back to me, hurrying out of the pool to clasp the towel around me.

"It is no less incongruous than holding a challenge in a bar."

I smiled. "Yes, but my challenge to you wasn't serious. I hope you'll notice that I'm not freaking out about this at all. I haven't even asked you how good you are with asword."

"I noticed." His mouth burned on mine for a moment, his fire being shared between us as his tongue twined around mine in a fiery - albeit brief - dance. "You are learning to have faith in me as is proper between a mateand her wyvern."

"No, I am learning to ask around. Pal told me earlier today that Dmitri had picked swords and that you were pleased because you were some sort of master swordsman a few centuries ago. You'd better not have forgotten anything."

Pal peeked at me out of the corner of his eye, his grin not too obvious. Drake pinched my bare behind as punishment for my saucy tone. "I never forget. Istvan will drive you when you are ready. The challenge is not f ~ Katie MacAlister

Because women tend to turn their anger inward and blame themselves, they tend to become depressed and their self-esteem is lowered. This, in turn, causes them to become more dependent and less willing to risk rejection or abandonment if they were to stand up for themselves by asserting their will, their opinions, or their needs.

Men often defend themselves against hurt by putting up a wall of nonchalant indifference. This appearance of independence often adds to a woman's fear of rejection, causing her to want to reach out to achieve comfort and reconciliation. Giving in, taking the blame, and losing herself more in the relationship seem to be a small price to pay for the acceptance and love of her partner.

As you can see, both extremes anger in and anger out-create potential problems. While neither sex is wrong in the way they deal with their anger, each could benefit from observing how the other sex copes with their anger. Most men, especially abusive ones, could benefit from learning to contain their anger more instead of automatically striking back, and could use the rather female ability to empathise with others and seek diplomatic resolutions to problems. Many women, on the other hand, could benefit from acknowledging their anger and giving themselves permission to act it out in constructive ways instead of automatically talking themselves out of it, blaming themselves, or allowing a man to blame them. Instead of giving in to keep the peace, it w ~ Beverly Engel

Every time you write anything, at least half your readers are going to disagree with you. A big part of sports writing is how you respond to that tension. ~ Joe Posnanski

You must look for constellations in the orange city lights. View each streetlamp as a star that's simply fallen from the night. So that even tired of footsteps feel like learning how to fly, and you're never truly trapped right where the earth touches the sky. Then when your world is turned upside down, you'll know no matter where you are, that you will always have the chance to fall asleep among the stars. ~ Erin Hanson

Learning how to work and learning how to fail is important. ~ Jamie Moyer

I've published many biographies over the years and enjoyed working with writers on their research, discussing it, thinking about it and how it revealed their subject - and one day the impulse came to me to write a life of someone. I made a long list of possible subjects and [ Barbara] Stanwyck was on the list. ~ Victoria Wilson

But how many young people truly comprehend the face of war until it's staring them down? You can't patrol unfriendly villages without embracing paranoia. You can't watch your battle buddies blown to bits without jonesing for revenge. You can't take a blow to the helmet without learning to duck. And you can't put people in your crosshairs, celebrate dropping them to the ground, without catching a little bloodlust. Paranoia. Revenge. Bloodlust. These things turn boys into men. But what kind of men? ~ Ellen Hopkins

Fashion it's not just about learning how to draw pretty pictures, and how to sew, it's everything that makes up your life. ~ Tim Gunn

Are you kidding me?' Shan asked, slightly drunk, slightly dramatic, and now sitting yoga style on the floor. 'You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race ... ' p.335 ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I'll hear a beat and think, 'How can I make this a banger?' I'll write the lyrics on my phone or on a piece of paper, and either way, it's going to be a slapper. ~ Swae Lee

I have a rule: Anything that can be done privately does not need to be performed publicly. It's why I love the gays but I hate their parades. Actually, I hate all parades. Marching to celebrate something you're born as seems silly. (As I write this, St. Patrick's Day is in full bore in Midtown. It's delightful how celebrating a heritage requires you to pick fights with strangers and then pee in a parking garage. The upside - the sea of clover-painted drunks moving in unison - might be the only green energy I've ever seen work.) And what's the point of a parade anyway? A bunch of yahoos who share some affinity, walking in one direction? Who decided this was entertainment? For previous generations, this was called a migration, or more often, refugees fleeing for their lives ~ Greg Gutfeld

One current of continuity runs underneath all the abortive phases of my life. From childhood on I have been obliged to drop anything I was doing to run after any man who seemed to know a little more than I did about God ... I most want to write about: how a modern woman has sought the face of God-not the name nor the fame but the face [ital] of God-and what adventures came to meet her on this ancient human path. ~ Mary Antin

I grow more intolerant of fools as the years roll on. If I had a son, I was saying, I would take him from school at the age of fourteen, not a moment later, and put him for two years in a commercial house. Wake him up; make an English citizen of him. Teach him how to deal with men as men, to write a straightforward business letter, manage his own money and gain some respect for those industrial movements which control the world. Next, two years in some wilder part of the world, where his own countrymen and equals by birth are settled under primitive conditions, and have formed their rough codes of society. The intercourse with such people would be a capital invested for life. The next two years should be spent in the great towns of Europe, in order to remove awkwardness of manner, prejudices of race and feeling, and to get the outward forms of a European citizen. All this would sharpen his wits, give him more interest in life, more keys to knowledge. It would widen his horizon. Then, and not a minute sooner, to the University, where he would go not as a child but a man capable of enjoying its real advantages, attend lectures with profit, acquire manners instead of mannerisms and a University tone instead of a University taint. ~ Norman Douglas

If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else. ~ James Spader

It hurts to admit it, but there were things in those letters that feel like Mom was taking a shot at me. Why did she write down that I was obsessed with singing songs from girl pop stars? Or how when she took Eric and me shopping for toys at CVS, I didn't let him bully me into buying a blue Power Ranger because I wanted to play with a Jean Grey action figure? I feel like it was her coded way of saying, "This is when I knew about you. ~ Adam Silvera

When we make the shift to seeing ourselves as transitionary events - as verbs rather than as nouns - we can step back and allow the flow to continue. Our efforts shift from controlling the circumstances of our lives to learning how to meet each brief moment fully and wholeheartedly. ~ Christopher K Germer

Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it. ~ Charles Bukowski