Writing Is Learning Quotes & Sayings

Science is experimental, moving forward step-by-step, making trial and learning through success and failure. Is not this also the way of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? The writings of those who preach the religion have from the very beginning insisted that it is to be proved by experience. If a man is drawn towards honour and courage and endurance, justice, mercy, and charity, let him follow the way of Christ and find out for himself. No findings in science hinder him in that way. — William Henry Bragg

Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me. — Amy Bloom

There is no way that I could pinpoint just one person. When I first started, I was listening to Randy Rogers quite a bit, and I was also pretty big into Josh Grider back then. I remember going to a lot of Kevin Fowler shows early, and Eli Young Band was another one of the groups I listened to a lot of when I was learning to write and play guitar. — Curtis Grimes

Language is present in a piece of writing like the sea in a single drop. — Kato Lomb

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, - solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language. — John Milius

My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn't feel like work, nor should today's younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to "dumb down" the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent's Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling. — H.B. Bolton

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant. — Walter Gilbert

Writing is not necessarily in the planning but about learning the craft of letting the imagination change that plan — Mark Draycott Author

What's great about working on a sitcom is that I spend so much time with people who are in other fields as well, such as writing, directing, and/or camera operating. Being on set is like being on a playground. I go from one thing to the next, and I've learned so much and hope to continue learning. — Olivia Holt

Anything I run across can light up the circuitry of my brain, and set me on an adventure. To research strains of yeast; hiccup fetishists; the proper use of inverse, obverse, converse and reverse; the ratio of main narrative to tangent, of forward action to aside. What else do we do but quest, pursue meaning in the information wash? Where does that storm sewer opening from the river into the city's underneath go to, anyhow? I grab a headlamp and head in. It's long and low and dark and stinks and extends for miles. Underneath the city is another city. The one above begins to disappear. That's what we're after, isn't it? To disappear? To venture into darkness, to let what we know or think we know recede for an hour, a day, a novel's length, and see what meaning can be made of what remains? — Ander Monson

The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," over the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of to-day have written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an artistic atmosphere. If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning that you think is so clear, deny that deadly knowledge that you think you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture, give up the very jewel of your pride, abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here. — G.K. Chesterton

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. — David K. Storrs

There is a whole industry in America of people who want to write, and those who teach it. Even if the students don't end up writing, what's good about them taking the courses is, they become great readers, learning to appreciate the writing. — Edmund White

It is easy to imagine a world where not only can few people read, few need to or want to. Serious reading can become the preserve of a s mall group of specialists, just as shoe-making or farming is for us. Think how much time would be saved. We send children to school and they spend most of their time learning to read and then, when they leave, they never pick up another book for the rest of their lives. Reading is only important if there is something worthwhile to read. Most of it is ephemeral. That means an oral culture of tales told and remembered. People can be immensely sophisticated in thought and understanding without much writing. — Iain Pears

And I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I'd like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen. — Charlotte Eriksson

We delude ourselves if we believe that skilled behavior is easy, that it can come about without effort. We forget the years of tuning, of learning and practice it takes to be skilled at even the most fundamental of human activities: eating, walking, talking, reading, and writing. It is tempting to want instant gratification - immediate expert performance and experiential pleasure - but the truth is that this primarily occurs only after considerable amounts of accretion and tuning. — Donald A. Norman

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers. — Jacques Barzun

I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find out what they are good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it is too late. There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can't, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having ... Learning is about finding out who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are standing on and what you are good at and what's over the horizon and, well, everything. Its about finding the place where you fit. I found the place where I fit, and I would like everybody else to find theirs. - Tiffany Aching — Terry Pratchett

Obscurity in writing is commonly an argument of darkness in the mind. The greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness. — John Wilkins

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit. — Patricia Hickman

Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music. — Ryan Adams

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it ... Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing. — Bernard Malamud

Adams has done a bit of everything, from radio to television to designing computer games. Not all of them worked out.

"These are life's little learning experiences," he said. "You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'

"At the end of all this being-determined-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades, I think I'm better off just sitting down and putting a hundred thousand words in a cunning order."

Adams writes "slowly and painfully."

"People assume you sit in a room, looking pensive and writing great thoughts," he said. "But you mostly sit in a room looking panic-stricken and hoping they haven't put a guard on the door yet. — Douglas Adams

When it comes to writing fiction, long or short, the learning curve never ends. I may be a professional writer to the IRS when I file my tax return, but in creative terms, I'm still an amateur, still learning my craft. We all are. Every day spent writing is a learning experience, a battle to do something new. — Stephen King

It is no longer enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in the understanding of visual images. Our children must learn how to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche, and distinguish facts from propaganda, analysis from banter and important news from coverage. — Ernest L. Boyer

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me. — PJ Harvey

The term 'role model' is so odious, but the truth is it's a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind. I think of Keats. Keats slogging away, devouring books, plagiarizing, impersonating, adapting, struggling, growing, writing many poems that made him blush and then a few that made him proud, learning everything he could from whomever he could find, dead or alive, who might have something useful to teach him. — Zadie Smith

Like water our ideals for writing what seems at first to be a calling to pen a masterpiece, it at first can be pure, fluid even (words can come easily) but we also have to learn to work with what our eyes glaze over as weak substitutes, words that we think have no substance to what we are learning towards. What is every poet's intention? Their intention is to forge, nullify, create, defend, fill the reader with the awe and inspiration that every poet themselves craves. They want to carve a name for themselves in the annals of history, leave a not so quiet legacy behind. Poets want immortality or rather they want their words to become immortal. Perhaps even Marlowe and Shakespeare had discussions about this. — Abigail George

The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation. — Paul A. Baran

I spend 60 hours a week on my business but I don't work for a minute. Work is hard. But what I do - writing, speaking, researching, learning, and sharing information - is pure joy. It's what I was called to do. — Carmine Gallo

Writing is a Passion, Art is my Dreams, Crafting is something I Enjoy.

The day one stops learning is the day one stops living. — Carol Hopkins

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

Some of us are born sensitive. And if, on top of that, we are pulled about in different directions (both emotionally and physically), we might just end up becoming writers.
No, we don't become writers in schools of creative writing. We become writers before we learn to write. The rest is simply learning how to put it all together. — Ruskin Bond

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

Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job o fa creative person ... Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Title: Teaching Writing Based on Journaling Concepts of Thoreau Thesis: Information processing generates active students. My thesis is to engage in remembering place. Through my own experience of basing my newest novel entitled The Passing Light on my own travel diary, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau. My students create E- journals as primary sources for essays. Writing based on keen observation and self discovery is a part of learning to write. — Maryann Diedwardo

The only thing I can say that is not bullshit is that you do have to learn to write in a way that you would learn to play the violin. Everybody seems to think that you should be able to turn on the faucet one day and out will come the novel. I think for most people it's just practice, practice, practice, that sense of just learning your instrument until - when you have an idea on the violin, you don't have to translate it into violin-speak anymore - the language is your own. It's not something you can think your way into, or outsmart. you've just got to do it. — Kevin Canty

In the year 2000 an illiterate person will not be someone who can't read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again. — Alvin Toffler

To me, writing is like learning to ride a bike. At first you have your training wheels on but before you know it, you have graduated to a ten speed!! — Lorine S. Thomas

Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them to be grammarians. — Herbert Simon

Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing. — S.I. Hayakawa

A doctorate study is the passion for extensive research, reading, thinking and writing. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The passion for self improvement is the love for reading, learning and writing. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possiblity of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear. — Harlan Ellison

I have written about the "toxic church" I grew up in: a legalistic, angry, racist church in the South. I joke about being "in recovery" from that church, learning along the way that much presented as absolute truth was in fact wrong. As a result, when I began writing I saw myself as someone on the edge, more comfortable asking questions than proposing answers. My early book titles (Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God) betray what I struggled with and how I — Philip Yancey

When I was writing my dissertation, I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification. — Bat For Lashes

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say. — Beryl Bainbridge

Upon learning that her cancer had spread to her spine, Paula prepared her thirteen year-old son for her death by writing him a letter of farewell that moved me to years. In her final paragraph she reminded him that the lungs in the human fetus do not breathe, nor do it's eyes see. Thus, the embryo is being prepared for an existence it cannot yet imagine — Irvin D. Yalom

There is nothing better than expressions in words. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.
Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview
(Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!) — Ray Bradbury

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that - the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.
[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957] — William Faulkner

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love. — Laura Kasischke

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic ... Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage. — Toni Morrison

Learning to exist in a world quite different from that which formed you is the condition, these days, of pursuing research you can on balance believe in and write sentences you can more or less live with. — Clifford Geertz

in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men. — Theodore Roosevelt

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up. — E.B. White

I haven't had a chance to pick up a good book in a long time, because I've been either reading scripts or learning them or writing them. And so, by the time the day is done, I usually just want to click on The Bachelor and fall asleep. But I gravitate toward biographies and things like that. — Justin Theroux

In a way I do hate the process of writing. It's like learning a role where you never think you're going to be able to conquer it when you start and it just takes enough focus and narrowing and getting enthusiastic and not losing it and so on. It's never good enough, but you aim for something and you hope it comes somewhat close. But it is a pleasure once you have written it. — Julie Andrews

The best advice I have is keep writing, keep practicing, keep winning, losing and understanding the difference. Never stop learning, never stop pushing yourself. Then find yourself a team you can work well with and help make awesome things happen. — Rhianna Pratchett

I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah ... — Mac DeMarco

Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance. — Susan Wiggs

Writing poetry is about learning to pare down the poem to the most essential words. Every word used has to be crucial to the poem. — Harley King

Learning is available at the library for free; under a tree with a dog-eared paperback; at a job with a boss who gives you responsibility and mentorship; while traveling; while leading a cause, movement, or charity; while writing a novel or composing a poem or crafting a song; while interning, apprenticing, or volunteering; while playing a sport or immersing yourself in a language; while starting a business; and now, while watching a TED talk or taking a Khan Academy class ... — Michael Ellsberg

The brain of the modern human is no longer capable of understanding reality directly. It used to be that a person lived, looked toward the horizon, howled at the moon, and formed his conceptions, however biased, based on his own experiences and observations. There used to be this thing called independent learning. Not anymore. They crystallize our brains like ice from water. Imagine how slowly, starting in childhood, your brain is crystallized for you, forming your conception of reality. We could even determine a unit of currency for all humanity, 'the value of one concept.' Everyone would have their own change purse, so to speak, and the coins in it, though of various values, quantities, styles, and metals, would all be from a single mint. — Elizaveta Mikhailichenko

I don't go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write. — Lorrie Moore

The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer. — Nadine Gordimer

One of the most intriguing ideas in the developmental sciences over the past decades is the phenomenon of the "J-shaped curve."19 While observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, the arts), psychologists noticed a surprising pattern: as a learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the dip that forms the middle part of the "J." But it turns out that the "stupid mistakes," in retrospect, were nothing more than growth errors. Once the learner gets past the dip, performance rises rapidly to new heights. — William Damon

Well, friends, learning about the "world" is not pretending you're a hooker while a guy from the part of New Jersey that's near Pennsylvania decides which Steely Dan record to put on at 4:00 A.M. The secrets of life aren't being revealed when someone laughs at you for having studied creative writing. There is no enlightenment to be gained from letting your semiboyfriend's bald friend touch your thigh too close to the place where it meets your crotch, but you let it happen because you think you might be in love. — Lena Dunham

Learning to write for the theatre is learning to be a human being, because the theatre by its very nature makes you deal with other human beings. — David Ives

A certain elementary training in statistical method is becoming as necessary for everyone living in this world of today as reading and writing. — H.G.Wells

I think this is the essence of life: to be willing circle back, to fall in deeper, to relearn what I thought I already knew. — Anna White

What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well? — Henry David Thoreau

If all that one sees is a tiny speck of perspective in the larger scheme of things. And each perspective is made alive by the amalgamation of learning. And learning is a mere accumulation of skill and knowledge : both deriving from Truth. And Truth is not absolute but more of a figment of one's imagination made apparent to the senses. Then all, or for the most part, is fiction. — Nikhil Sharda

Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances. — Samuel Johnson

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told. — Frank McCourt

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life. — Natalie Goldberg

If I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it. — Ernest Hemingway,

Initially, I feel expansive when I try something new, and then contract as soon as I encounter difficulty or the unknown. I am learning to experiment with my tolerance of difficulty and the not knowing, in order to go further with my creative dreams.
Whenever I experience contraction, I explore it by asking, "Where did I stop and why?"
Building a creative dream life is not just about achieving, succeeding, or "meeting goals." It is also about floundering, stumbling, tripping and failing. — SARK

If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively. — Gerald R. Ford

Writing doesn't get any easier with time or talent. If writing is easy for you, you're probably still learning the craft. You haven't perfected your style or landed upon your "voice." You haven't learned to analyze your writing with a critical eye, to rip it apart and figure out why it isn't doing exactly what you want. — Darynda Jones

If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write. — S.E. Hinton

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives? — Alan Kay

One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. — Donald Knuth

I was learning the craft; I didn't study writing in school. Rejection was my motivation, and failure is what taught me. — Pierce Brown

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books. — Charles Soule

I've translated two of Bae's novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language. — Deborah Smith

I spent years in a graduate literature program learning what makes great writing, and the only conclusion we came to was that the future of graduate literature programs was safe because nobody is ever going to agree on what makes great writing. — Brandon Sanderson

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains. — Bill Gates

The thing I know how to do most is write a play. I came up loving plays and learning about plays and writing plays. I actually feel like an outsider when I'm writing movies and television. — Aaron Sorkin

Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible — Barack Obama

A computer search would have given me a list of pertinent cases, but without that I had to read everything. That is harder by far, but you end up learning a lot more. I was forced to remember cases because making copies of everything was too expensive. Keeping cases in your head is good, too, because cases are like puzzle pieces floating around in your mind, and sometimes, in moments of creativity, they fall into place and form a picture. If they were words on a screen that you could pull up anytime you wished, that phenomenon wouldn't happen as easily. — Shon Hopwood

There is a method to the madness of James Patterson's success. Co-writing with him is a terrific learning experience, particularly in the art of crafting a perfect thriller. The collaboration also gives me an opportunity to access a wider global audience. — Ashwin Sanghi

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Many times, what people call 'writer's block' is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical. — Pearl Cleage

I actually intentially have poor spelling and grammar in my books. I feel that spelling and grammar shoudn't reflect inteltect. I beleive not everyone has the same recorses. Not everyone can aford to be taught the same grammar. Some people like me have learning dissabilites. Some people have dissorders or mental dissabilites. Some people never went to school. So when your judging someones writing, or reviewing, it. Please I ask of you this, don't take the grammar and spelling into acount. Because lets face it. Not everyone is as privleged as you. — Adam Snowflake

Learning to write ... is a desperately idiosyncratic, eccentric, single-souled, lifelong quest. — Bret Lott

Education is neither writing on a blank slate nor allowing the child's nobility to come into flower. Rather, education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved. — Steven Pinker

There are times when quantity is at least as important as quality in learning an art. — Lawrence Watt-Evans