Young Writers Quotes

In my travels I am often asked if college stifles young writers. In my opinion, it doesn't stifle them enough. ~ Flannery O'Connor

It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway. ~ George Murray

But it's clear to me that us slow-poke writers are a dying breed. It's amazing how thoroughly my young writing students have internalized the new machine rhythm, the rush many of my young writers are in to publish. The majority don't want to sit on a book for four, five years. The majority don't want to listen to the silence inside and outside for their artistic imprimatur. The majority want to publish fast, publish now. ~ Junot Diaz

Read Jerrod Edson. He is one of our best young writers. ~ David Adams Richards

The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party line like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

People ask me what's advice for young writers and one of of the things I say is try to get in a room with people who are better than you. If you're the best person in the room you gotta get out of that room. ~ Bob Odenkirk

You can best write about your own experiences. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

INTERVIEWER:
What specific piece of advice would you give to young writers?

MALAMUD:
Write your heart out. ~ Bernard Malamud

Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there. ~ Robert Morgan

They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women. ~ John O'Hara

I also liked it when professors assigned us stories that they love. In general, I liked workshops more when they were more than just a workshop, when the professor took the time to actually guide us as young writers and teach us things it took them a long time to figure out on their own. I could probably write ten pages on this question. ~ Mary J. Miller

One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies. ~ Joy Williams

These works are handed down from teacher to pupil, from parent to child, almost without question, like DNA. They are memorized, recited, discussed in book reports, included in university entrance exams, and once the student is grown up, they become a source for quotation. They are made into movies again and again, they are parodied, and inevitably they become the object of ambitious young writers' revolt and contempt. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

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

What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings. ~ Marlon James

The advice I continually give to young writers is this, "Learn to paint pictures with words." Not just once upon a time, but ... In the long secret dust of ages, beneath a blue forgotten sky, where trade winds caress the sun bleached shores of unknown realms ... See, as much as there are words in poetry, there is a poetry in words. Use it, stay faithful to the path you have set your heart upon and follow it. ~ Brian Jacques

There's no path to being a writer that's applicable to everyone. Some young writers have the fortitude to work in a vacuum. For me, it was important to have some sense that my failures weren't unique. ~ Jonathan Dee

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin. ~ Susanna Moore

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

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compress, compress...

Actually, when you think about it, not many novels in the Spare tradition are terribly cheerful. Jokes you can usually pluck out whole, by the roots, so if you're doing some heavy-duty prose-weeding, they're the first to go. And there's some stuff about the whole winnowing process I just don't get. Why does it always stop when the work in question has been reduced to sixty or seventy thousand words--entirely coincidentally, I'm sure, the minimum length for a publishable novel? I'm sure you could get it down to twenty or thirty if you tried hard enough. In fact, why stop at twenty or thirty? Why write at all? Why not just jot the plot and a couple of themes down on the back of an envelope and leave it at that? The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place. The obsession with austerity is an attempt to compensate, to make writing resemble a real job, like farming, or logging. (It's also why people who work in advertising put in twenty-hour days.) Go on, young writers--treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! Spoil yourself! Readers won't mind! ~ Nick Hornby

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. ~ Ted Hughes

Young writers find out what kinds of writers they are by experiment. If they choose from the outset to practice exclusively a form of writing because it is praised in the classroom or otherwise carries appealing prestige, they are vastly increasing the risk inherent in taking up writing in the first place. ~ John McPhee

Around 1980, I'd been writing short stories, all to no success; so I wrote a fan letter to Stephen King and asked "How long should it take an aspiring writer to either get published or know when to give up?" Lo and behold, King wrote back to me in long hand with blue flair pen on 14-inch paper, purveying a very nice, helpful note; in it he said my letter proved a "command of the language," that I should never give up, and that it would take years to succeed, not months. "That's cold comfort but it's the truth." This was the ultimate encouragement for a young writer to be who didn't know shit about the market. I took Mr. King's advice and actually sold my first novel little more than a year later. I'll always be copiously grateful for this advice, and it's the same advice I give aspiring writers now (along with the story of King's reply!). ~ Edward Lee

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

I always ask young writers, 'Are you certain you want to be a writer? If you're absolutely sure, then do it.' If you really want to write, writing has to take precedence over everything else, except for taking care of your loved ones. It has to be more important than any possession, more important than fame. We hear about just a few writers who get famous, but most of them don't. It's got to mean more than that. ~ Herbert Gold

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start. ~ Robert Morgan

The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it. ~ Diane Wakoski

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere. Which is how it should be. ~ John Banville

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

It's much more important to write than to be written about. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I kind of dislike 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' but most of Hemingway in general, mainly because his stylistic shenanigans ruined so many young writers of my generation who tried to imitate him. I think, for his time, he moved fiction to a different level stylistically, or at least added to the dialogue, but in our time, he's annoying. ~ Christopher Moore

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts. ~ Aaron Sorkin

When I talk to students or young writers about the importance of being unafraid to take controversial positions, I'm struck by the degree to which they can't entertain a thought, much less commit one to paper, without imagining the cacophony of snark they'll get in response. ~ Meghan Daum

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. ~ Ring Lardner

'Skins' had been a brilliant breeding ground for young actors, young directors and young writers. It was a safe environment to experiment; it tried new things, and it was an amazing time and amazing to be part of it. ~ Joe Dempsie

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so. ~ Andre Gide

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

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers
namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out
don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy
when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language. ~ Francine Prose

Write the truest sentence you know. Then write another."
Hemingway's advice to other young writers in "A Moveable Feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto. ~ John Updike

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why. ~ Jack Kerouac

The worst advice a young writer can get is "Write what you know." Imagination is more important than experience. ~ Joe Haldeman

Fueled by the need to interpret the past, to explore the present, and to imagine the future, each generation shapes the world of books. ~ Pawan Mishra

Write a lot. And I mean a ridiculous amount. You have to write so much that you don't mind throwing away and changing things that you've written - which is the second thing you have to do. A lot of young writers are very precious about their words. Don't be - you've got to be ready to burn stuff. You're not as good as you think you are, at least not yet. The more you write, the faster you'll write, and the less you'll mind throwing stuff out. ~ Josh Lieb

I think I would have been a lot more miserable and discovered a lot less of things I liked if I hadn't had LiveJournal in high school. I think it's interesting how blogging seems to be shaping a new generation of writers. I feel like growing up with the Internet/blogging/other structures seems to be a reason for the similarities people see in Tao Lin's writing and other young writers, rather than direct. ~ Marie Calloway

There's a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow significant. But really, it's not their personal lives that matter, but their own, hard-fought-for ideas. Not just anybody's ideas, but the ideas that they have paid for with their suffering and their sacrifices and their love of their fellow humans. ~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized. ~ Manuel Puig

What first stuns the young writer emerging from college is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul, a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome and therefore, of what use graduate work? ~ Brad Gooch

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist. ~ Pat Conroy

She quotes Robert Louis Stevenson about how young writers must read like predators. And she says that all of us, not just writers, must read like predators. For books are food, she said, for every single one of us. ~ Pete Hamill

Being a writer, I take thing seriously (not too seriously). I may be a young writer/self publisher, I do love to write and I want to share my stories to the world. but more importantly, I do take writing seriously. ~ Simi Sunny

Young writers take themselves very seriously in college. ~ Kyle Kinane

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

The question one asks of the young writer who wants to
know if he's got what it takes is this: "Is writing novels what
you want to do? Really want to do?"
If the young writer answers, "Yes," then all one can say is:
Do it. In fact, he will anyway. ~ John Gardner

It kept coming back to joy-- how could I live a life filled with it? And always, the answer that came back to me was "Write."

... I am here because of the indigenous people of this country, because of the enslaved people who were here before me, the young people of the civil rights movements who fought hard to get me to this moment.

My biggest responsibility is to recognize that I am part of the continuum, that I didn't just appear and start writing stuff down. I'm writing stuff down because Andre Lorde wrote stuff down, because James Baldwin wrote stuff down... and all the people who came before me -- set the stage for my work. I have to keep all of that in my heart as I move through the world, not only for the deep respect I have for them, but also for my own strength.

So my advice to other young writers: Read widely. Study other writers. Be thoughtful, Then go out and do the work of changing the form, finding your own voice, and saying what you need to say. Be fearless. And care.

The fact that young people continue to rise brings me such joy. They are where I look to find my hope.

-- "Continue to Rise: A Conversation with Jacqueline Woodson ~ Glory Edim

A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

I think what happens to young writers is that they use up every life experience that they have had up to that point for their first novel. Then you have to come up with something for the second novel, but you really don't have anything to say. ~ Lee Smith

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

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

There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion. ~ Mary Gaitskill

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman

For me writing is a long, hard, painful process, but it is addictive, a pleasure that I seek out actively. My advice to young writers is this: Read a lot. Read to find out what past writers have done. Then write about what you know. Write about your school, your class, about your teachers, your family. That's what I did. Each writer must find his or her own kind of voice. Finally, you have to keep on writing. ~ Laurence Yep

AND WHAT THE YOUNG WRITERS ALL FAILED TO REALIZE IS THAT THE WAY YOU BEST CONNECT TO THE READER IS NOT BY CRAFTING THE MOST LYRICAL AND DAZZLING ARRAY OF WORDS, NOT BY BEING UNCLEAR AND HINTING AT YOUR MUDDLED MEANING THROUGH PLEASANT-SOUNDING VAGUERY, BUT BY COMMUNICATING A SEQUENCE OF MEANINGFUL IDEAS IN A WAY THE READER CAN ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND. ~ Film Crit Hulk!

A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk. ~ Robert Anderson

Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough
sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any
way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised,knowing the characters' actions may change. It makes no difference
how clumsy the sketch is - sketches are not supposed
to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over
and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one's
story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing
what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one
gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one's head,
gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the
characters' problems and hopes. ~ John Gardner

Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. ~ Mary Karr

I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame. ~ Zadie Smith

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

My advice to young writers would be to write every day, even if it is only a few words. Get yourself on the habit of writing and it will become a lifelong one. And find a place to write where you are physically comfortable. You can't concentrate if you aren't. Ernest Hemingway could only write standing up, and Truman Capote could only write lying down! ~ Cassandra Clare

If the future depends on stories, then our future looks bright indeed. ~ Pawan Mishra

A lot of young writers are very precious about their words. Don't be - you've got to be ready to burn stuff. You're not as good as you think you are, at least not yet. ~ Josh Lieb

I guess the important thing for young writers is to read. ~ Paul Auster

That, for me, is a very important test of a young writer's commitment because most of them are going to have to continue doing that when they've finished the program. ~ Tobias Wolff

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

I think I was born making up stories in my head. I wrote my first play when I was 5. No, I couldn't write yet. It was with a stick on a piece of paper that floated by on the wind, and it was about a girl named Cindy. The fact that it closely resembled Cinderella is pure coincidence. ~ Darynda Jones

Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable. ~ William Strunk Jr.

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

When a young writer deliberately tries to create an effect, the result is often a little self-conscious and overdone. But why is it so hard for us to glory in what the writer has tried to do, or even in the very fact that the writer has deliberately tried to do something? ~ Lucy Calkins

There are a lot of people of my generation in New Zealand literature, young writers on their first or second books, that I'm just really excited about. There seems to be a big gap between the generation above and us; it seems to be quite radically different in terms of form and approach. ~ Eleanor Catton

How is Mrs. Rivers doing?' asked the agent, a very tall and large man, well-dressed, bald and depressing, with a manner of gliding into his office from a side door without perceptibly moving his feet which had struck terror into many young writers and caused them to accept the lowest terms Mr. Hobb could offer. ~ Angela Thirkell

Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground. ~ Cyril Connolly

As a footnote to the above, I would like to say that I am getting very tired of literary authorities, on both the stage and the screen, who advise young writers to deal only with those subjects that happen to be familiar to them personally. It is quite true that this theory probably produced "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," but the chances are it would have ruled out "Hamlet. ~ Wolcott Gibbs

There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why. ~ David Mitchell

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. ~ Lillian Hellman

I always talk to young writers about when you make art in your room, you make art. And when you send it to New York and L.A., you have to be a professional. Of course, when you sell your book rights as an option for a movie, you have to be a professional about that. ~ Matthew Quick

My advice to young writers is, if you can't marry money, at least don't marry envy. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry. ~ Robert Morgan

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well. ~ Zadie Smith

Our future depends on stories. As the world advances, literature has the ability to ground us - in our humanness, our imaginations, and our enlightenment. ~ Pawan Mishra

Life is not a straight forward plain ... no linear pattern, simply A to B, and on to C and inevitably ending us up at Z, where we are the inevitably tossed by angels into heaven or hell. Progression is immaterial, time relative. For Jacob, life ebbed and flowed into complex woven conundrums of interrelatedness, of stops and starts and intervening presents transforming over and into elaborate and repeating futures. He believed that at all times man existed with one foot in heaven, another in hell, and everywhere in between and within lay his soul. ~ Nancy Young

We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one ought to let him in to dinner. ~ Catherynne M Valente

People are going to get older and young guys are going to come in and race and get more competitive. ~ Dale Earnhardt

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a
creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the
managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the
young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the
cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and
blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom;
that is to say, of a spectral shade. ~ Gaston Leroux

Drank red wine with fish if he wanted. ~ John Northcutt Young

While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. ~ Timothy Keller

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said,
"It made a difference for that one. ~ Loren Eiseley

Everything is so dreamy when you are young. After you grow up it kind of becomes
just real. ~ Elvis Presley

For every young person I meet, I learn an idea. ~ Ronan Farrow