Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries — to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.

Writing is one-third imagination, one-third experience, and one third observation.

PhD, MFA, self-taught — the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

Inspiration comes from many places — experiences, places, people, books, and the work of other artists. As a writer, it is important to keep one’s senses open to the world around and then trying to capture those impressions to a page. Writing is sort of a game or puzzle to me — playing with words and concepts to present something new to listeners.

"A writer needs to read almost more than his eyes can bear, to know what is going, & what has gone on.... And a writer needs general knowledge. And a writer needs to write. And a writer needs to live richly with eyes open, & heart, too." —

The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsede 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic. 1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.

To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

...the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure and success.

“The writer needs good works—good literary ones” (33).

"The Catholic writer really needs only three things to succeed: faith, hope and ingenuity" (31).

I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author.. reasoning powers must be brought to reinforce imagination.