Creative writing Quotes

Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.

- Aimee Bender

I love teaching creative writing, and I think I'm good at it, but in a different life, I could have been teaching elementary school.

- Alexi Zentner

I'm a writer who stacks cat food for a living. It's true: I have a master's degree in creative writing, I've published two critically successful books, and I get paid to replenish the shelves of my local food co-op with pet food, sponges and toilet paper. Nine days out of 10, I do it quite happily.

- Ali Liebegott

I took an MA course in creative writing a couple of years back, and I was definitely in the bottom of the class.

- Allan Guthrie

Favorite subject? I would have to say creative writing.

- Bindi Irwin

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

- Charles Frazier

Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My first semester, I got a D in creative writing.

- Conrad Hall

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

- David Guterson

I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.

- Donald Hall

Most of the best writing, the most creative writing, the most interesting, the most out-of-the-box kind of stuff, is being done on cable, you know, and on the computer. I mean, whatever it is, Amazon or Netflix or something. Because they're just willing to take chances, you know, and there's a market for it.

- Ed Harris

I knew I wanted to do something creative, and you don't necessarily go to Harvard to do that. It's not the best choice for creative writing.

- Gabrielle Zevin

I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love.

- Gene Luen Yang

I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.

- Jason Isbell

A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.

- Jay McInerney

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

- Jennifer Weiner

I never took creative writing.

- Jesse Andrews

I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

- Justin Townes Earle

I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.

- Kate Atkinson

I always got good grades in creative writing from elementary school on up.

- Keith Hernandez

The move to creating stories was a natural progression for me, but the most pivotal time was probably in 6th grade: That year, a friend introduced me to the stories of Ray Bradbury, and a student teacher introduced me to creative writing.

- Lynn Flewelling

I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.

- Mahershala Ali

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

- Mark Strand

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

- Marlon James

In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I decided I wanted to become a novelist.

- Meg Cabot

I take a real interest in the possibilities of teaching - including the practice of bringing creative writing, and serious reading, into the classroom. I am persuaded that since language is alive, much of the challenge has already been met by the poets and novelists we read.

- Michael Cadnum

I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

- Peter Coyote

Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

- Rachel Cusk

I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.

- Rachel Kushner

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

- Robert Morgan

I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.

- Samantha Shannon

I think the book that really kind of woke me up a little bit when I was starting to write was 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson. I was in grad school at Brown, going for an M.A. in creative writing. Those stories seemed to me to be doing away with pretty writing.

- Tom Drury

I was an A student and I liked creative writing.

- Trisha Yearwood

I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children.

- Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination.

- Vikas Swarup