Top 30 Young Writers Quotes

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned savings – say, some two-three lakhs – and getting your book printed. It’s not published; it’s printed!

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

Young writers should keep out of pubs and remember that the cliche way of the artistic life is a lie.

I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

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.

I often meet frustrated young writers who say they’ve only got so far and just can’t finish a book. Even if you don’t happen to use what you’ve worked on that day, it has taught you something and you’ll be amazed when you might come back to it and use it again.

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.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don’t always use it well.

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.

It’s a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

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.

I think what happens to young writers is that they use up every life experience that they have had up to that point for their first novel. Then you have to come up with something for the second novel, but you really don’t have anything to say.

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.

When I create a TV show, it’s so that I can write it. I’m not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people – experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they’re not writing scripts.

There are a lot of people of my generation in New Zealand literature, young writers on their first or second books, that I’m just really excited about. There seems to be a big gap between the generation above and us; it seems to be quite radically different in terms of form and approach.

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.

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.

A lot of young writers ask me about my process. They know what they want to write – but they need to know how. What’s the right way? How do the professionals do it? What’s the secret?

I think young writers ought to be heretical.

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.

I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they’re so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion.

I won’t usually just sit down to write. I’d have done it in my head already. I visualise a story just like a film strip running in my head. I guess that is also a reason why my books have such a visual element to them. And it’s what I tell young writers: plan your story ahead.

We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.