Gifted Writers Quotes & Sayings

I believe there's a common ground in what all gifted writers write. It has to do with their wish to turn darkness into light. — Mandy Patinkin

By all accounts, John Frankenheimer was singularly obsessed with The Manchurian Candidate, a film that, according to Daniel O'Brien, the director regarded "as his first truly personal project, feeling that the story made an all too valid point regarding the political manipulation and conditioning of American society. — James Kaplan

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck. — Leslie Ford

I'm not talented or gifted. I'm a committed, meticulous workaholic. The only reason I succeed is because I refuse to fail. — Jessie Snow

If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. — Alan Grayson

Much advice on writing has the tone of moral counsel, as if being a good writer will make you a better person. Unfortunately for cosmic justice, many gifted writers are scoundrels, and many inept ones are the salt of the earth. But the imperative to overcome the curse of knowledge may be the bit of writerly advice that comes closest to being sound moral advice: always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mindset and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers. — Steven Pinker

Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation. — Salman Rushdie

Whatever you do - his father continued - dream big, take risks, and work harder than whoever else is doing the same thing. Do you know why I've succeeded? not because of talent, I've known writers more gifted than I am. But I was driven to wring every molecule out of whatever talent I possessed. Success is not something you aspire to, you have to grab it by the throat. — Richard North Patterson

J.R. Angelella is a truly gifted writer. Zombie is one of the smartest, strangest, and most beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories you will ever encounter. — Donald Ray Pollock

Bad marriages don't cause infidelity; infidelity causes bad marriages. — Frank Pittman

Today it is an amazing, if unexpected, legacy of Star Wars that so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga. — George Lucas

Mary Jo Putney is a gifted writer with an intuitive understanding of what makes romances work. I loved Silk and Shadows, couldn't put it down, and don't think readers will, either. — Jayne Ann Krentz

It is rare and very inspiring that a head of state would make such an investment of time to write a book like this. It is a fine gift to the judokas of the world as well as to those of Russia ... Vladimir Putin Sensei and his co-writers have established themselves as gifted writers and contributors to the judo world. — Keiko Fukuda

I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts. — Mike Tyson

Unfortunately for cosmic justice, many gifted writers are scoundrels, and many inept ones are the salt of the earth. — Steven Pinker

All of this goes back to Bill Clinton. It's not a coincidence that radical welfare reform took place on the same watch that also saw a radical deregulation of the financial services industry. Clinton was a man born with a keen nose for two things: women with low self-esteem and political opportunity. When he was in the middle of a tough primary fight in 1992 and came out with a speech promising to "end welfare as we know it," he could immediately smell the political possibilities, and it wasn't long before this was a major plank in his convention speech (and soon in his first State of the Union address). Clinton understood that putting the Democrats back in the business of banging on black dependency would allow his party to reseize the political middle that Democrats had lost when Lyndon Johnson threw the weight of the White House behind the civil rights effort and the War on Poverty. — Matt Taibbi

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. — Ann Patchett

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be - if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking - but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts.
Lorraine Hansberry speech, "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964. — Lorraine Hansberry

As you continue breathing others take their last. So stop complaining & enjoy living your life as best as you can. — Timothy Pina

As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted can possibly enable anyone to make the discovery. — Henry Fielding

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed - in view of the overall shortage of time - by patience. — Christopher Hitchens

Dixon, our, um, Lives? are in Danger?" "Hardly enough to interrupt a perfectly good - " Here he is silenc'd by an immense Thunder-Bolt from directly overhead, as their frail Prism is bleach'd in unholy Light. " - Saturday Night for, is it I ask you . . . ?" his Head emerging at last from beneath a Blanket, "Mason? Say, Mason, - are thee . . . ?" Mason, now outside, pushes aside the Tent-flap with his head, but does not enter. "Dixon. I will now seek Shelter beneath that Waggon out there, d'ye see it? If you wish to join me, there's room." "Bit too much Iron there for me, thanks all the same. — Thomas Pynchon

Thank God I didn't put my career over family. That would have been the biggest mistake of my life. I'm really happy it went the way it did. — Leslie Mann

The limitations of my endurance were expanded over and over. At times I felt that if I did not sit down I would collapse. Then something would happen to attract my attention ... miraculously, the distraction always provided wings, carrying new strength, a second wind. — Marlo Morgan

The best introduction to the psychological world of one of the most important and gifted writers of our time. — Italo Calvino

I was doing an interview with someone who had done very interesting profiles on some of America's greatest authors, and I noticed a trend emerge. So many of America's greatest writers, J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, for example, were eccentric, reclusive types. I thought a story that showed how someone helped a great writer break through the barrier of isolation and re-enter the world would make a terrific story. It struck me that it would be even more interesting if the person who brings the writer out is someone young--a teenager, for example--who is also in some way gifted. — Mike Rich

I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up. — Jennifer Egan

Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page. — Mel Brooks

Many high-functioning multiples are gifted writers and artists, who, as they heal, are able to find an aesthetic outlet for the sealed-off rage and pain they have not allowed themselves to feel. — Marlene Steinberg

There is one thing that humans strive for with every cell, every gene, every nerve fiber of our beings ... More than Mallomars, more than hot sex, we want to belong. — Cynthia Heimel

There is a minority of gifted, willfuf people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. — George Orwell