{"id":26517,"date":"2021-04-26T07:24:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=26517"},"modified":"2022-12-26T03:34:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T07:34:29","slug":"quotes-on-reading-like-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/how-to-write-creative-content\/become-a-better-writer-by-reading\/quotes-on-reading-like-a-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on reading like a writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers and others say<\/h2>\n

\"Quotes

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“If the shoe fits, steal it.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 One of Ann’s graduate writing students<\/h6>\n
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\u201cNo one needs a Ph.D. in English. Just read.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 April Bernard, author, in Escape From The Ivory Tower<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cHemingway studied as models the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E.M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Annie Dillard, author, in The Writing Life<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cIf you sang \u2018John Henry\u2019 as many times as me \u2014 \u2018John Henry was steel-driving man, driving with a hammer in his hand, John Henry said a man ain\u2019t nothing but a man,\u2019 \u201d he said. \u201cIf you sang that song as many times as I did, you would have written \u2018How many roads must a man walk down,\u2019 too.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize-winning songwriter<\/h6>\n
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“Go three days without reading and your speech will become tasteless.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chinese proverb<\/h6>\n
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“Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Charles Caleb Colton, clergyman, sportsman, gambler, and aphorist<\/h6>\n
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“I not only use all the brains I have, I use all the brains I can borrow.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States<\/h6>\n
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“Amateurs plagiarize. Real writers steal.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 T.S. Eliot, Nobel Prize-winning writer<\/h6>\n
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“Read, read, read. Read everything \u2014 trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Faulkner, Nobel Prize-winning novelist<\/h6>\n
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“Read a lot. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post<\/em>. When you find someone who\u2019s work you like, ‘break the code,’ or figure out how they constructed it. Read a book a week: fiction, nonfiction \u2014 you can learn from both. I’m an inveterate reader of detective fiction. There’s no better narrative structure than good detective fiction.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Halberstam, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, at the 2003 Nieman Narrative Conference<\/h6>\n
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\u201cChildren need models more than they need critics.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Joseph Joubert, French essayist<\/h6>\n
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\u201cWhen I read Ray Bradbury as a kid, I wrote like Ray Bradbury \u2014everything green and wondrous and seen through a lens smeared with the grease of nostalgia. When I read James M. Cain, everything I wrote came out clipped and stripped and hard-boiled. When I read Lovecraft, my prose became luxurious and Byzantine. I wrote stories in my teenage years where all these styles merged, creating a kind of hilarious stew. This sort of stylistic blending is a necessary part of developing one\u2019s own style, but it doesn\u2019t occur in a vacuum.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don\u2019t have time to read, you don\u2019t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cBeggars beg; geniuses steal.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Gerry McGovern, Web content management consultant<\/h6>\n
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“Reading is the one necessary prerequisite for writing. Every published writer of books I know grew up reading.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Writers learn from other writers. I collect examples of physical descriptions that I admire and study them for content, tone, pacing, even sentence length.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Scanlan, senior faculty-writing, The Poynter Institute<\/h6>\n
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“Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Giorgos Seferis, poet, writer, ambassador, Nobel laureate<\/h6>\n
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“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American writer and wit<\/h6>\n
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“For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Eudora Welty, author of stories from the American South<\/h6>\n
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\u201cThe secret of good writing is simply reading.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Avi Wortis, award-winning children’s book author<\/h6>\n
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\u201cStart copying [what] you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of [the] copy you will find yourself.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014Yohji Yamamoto, designer<\/h6>\n
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