Lucy Calkins Quotes & Sayings

Our job is to ask questions of children so that children internalize these questions and ask them of themselves and their own emerging drafts. — Lucy Calkins

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

You need to understand something, boy. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If you are one of those people how only sees problems and darkness and despair, then that is all there is ever going to be for you. But if you are one of those people how sees hope, opportunity, and love, then you can make a difference — Lucy Calkins

Teach the writer, not the writing. — Lucy Calkins

Write about just one thing, I have said, and there is wisdom in this advice ... And yet, there is wisdom also in William Sloanes contrary observation: Almost all effective writing above the level of the soup can turns out to be about quite a lot of things fused or laced or linked together. — Lucy Calkins

Writing well has everything to do with being able to read one's own work with an eye toward the unmet possibilities that are there. — Lucy Calkins

Meanings come not from events themselves, but from what we bring to them. — Lucy Calkins

Similarly, although we use prepositional phrases when we write, we apparently don't write more effectively when we can label our language in these ways. — Lucy Calkins