Wallace Stegner Quotes about Writing

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We do not write what we know; we write what we want to find out.

We do not write what we know; we write what we want to find out.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Want, Knows

Hard writing makes easy reading.

Wallace Stegner

Reading, Writing, Easy

Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.158, Modern Library

We write to make sense of it all.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Make Sense

Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Materials, Ifs

Wallace Stegner (2002). “On Teaching and Writing Fiction”, p.32, Penguin

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Ambition, School

"On Teaching and Writing Fiction".

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Practice, Skills

It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Peculiar, Fiction

A writer is an organism that will go on writing even after its heart has been cut out.

Wallace Stegner

Writing, Heart, Cutting

Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can’t afford self-doubt and he can’t let other people’s opinions, even a father’s, keep him from writing.

Wallace Stegner

Father, Writing, Self

Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.53, Modern Library