Young writers quotes:

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The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties. -- W. Somerset Maugham
It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway. -- George Murray
There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent. -- J. B. Priestley
There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly. -- Jonathan Ames
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. -- Lillian Hellman
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. -- Lillian Hellman
Read Jerrod Edson. He is one of our best young writers. -- David Adams Richards
I guess the important thing for young writers is to read. -- Paul Auster
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment. -- Doris Lessing
A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk. -- Robert Anderson
Elizabeth Searle writes with intelligence, passion and wit. She's one of the best young writers around. -- Robert Boswell
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well. -- Zadie Smith
I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto. -- John Updike
Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town. -- Steven Curtis Chapman
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I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist. -- Pat Conroy
Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man. -- E. B. White
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
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Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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
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
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
The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful. -- Dorothy Allison
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader. -- David Foster Wallace
I do a lot of teaching... and so I think I know how hard it is for young writers, how they have to work two jobs to survive. -- Erica Jong
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
All of us ambitious young writers hoped to have a cover story in Esquire, of course. The idea was to write the best, most entertaining article that you can. -- Laurence Shames
Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work. -- Paddy Chayefsky
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 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
I am not a writer, but I feel that when our production company is successful, we'll be able to give some young writers with fresh voices an opportunity to put their work out there. -- Viola Davis
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
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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
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
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
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 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
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
There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten. -- Anne Enright
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
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As a middle-aged woman who has had some luck as a writer, I'd like this profession of author to remain a possibility for young writers in the future - and not become an arena solely for the hobbyist or the well-heeled. -- Janet Fitch
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
I've grown up on a diet of metaphors. If young writers would find those writers who can give them metaphors by the bushel and the peck, then they'll become better writers - to learn how to capsualize things and present them in metaphorical form. -- Ray Bradbury
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
Nobody tells young writers it's okay if you're not very good, you'll get better. So I just thought I'm not very good, so I should try to do every other thing besides writing. That's how I ended up being a hitchhiker, a world traveler, and a mathematician. -- Bonnie Jo Campbell
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
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
I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft. -- George R. R. Martin
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
Young writers take themselves very seriously in college. -- Kyle Kinane
Young writers should definitely research the current sounds and styles. -- Lamont Dozier
If you are a young writer today, it's very hard. -- Doris Lessing
Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself. -- John Updike
I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age. -- P. J. Harvey
You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young! -- Joanna Trollope
Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there. -- Robert Morgan
My dad is a successful television producer, director and writer, and my mom's a director and writer. Even when I was young, I wanted to be an actress. -- Troian Bellisario
At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young. -- Margaret Mahy
The most difficult thing about living as a writer is precisely 'having to write.' Pretending to be a writer is easy. Living freely, reading many books, going on frequent trips, cultivating minor eccentricities... but genuinely being a writer is difficult, because you have to write something that will convince both yourself and readers. -- Kim Young-ha
I'm an accidental writer. -- William P. Young
I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent. -- Marguerite Young
Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism. -- Marguerite Young
I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer. -- Marguerite Young
Alafair Burke is one of the finest young crime writers working today. -- Lisa Unger
You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their young. -- Dennis Potter
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. -- Wallace Stegner
The wonderful fortune of some writers deludes and leads to misery a great number of young people. -- Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life. -- Ann Patchett
When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers. -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction. -- Erica Jong
I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books. -- Paul Auster
When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound. -- Paul Auster
Young writers need to be encouraged to write - just write - with no restrictions on form, style or content. -- Kelley Armstrong
I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?' -- K. A. Applegate
Young writers should read books past bedtime and write things down in notebooks when they are supposed to be doing something else. -- Daniel Handler
I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, and they had great writers' chops. -- Robin Williams
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
I've always liked the classic "young adult" writers like Mark Twain, Jack London, Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens. They write so clearly, and they know how to entertain. -- Arthur Bradford
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
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

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