We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

About This Quote

Writing is an art, and it is improvisation. We are limited by what we know. This especially holds true for the young writer. Children are taught to read by their parents, teachers, family members, friends, books, magazines, newspapers etc.

But they are not taught to write. They are not asked to write down their own stories that they have experienced or observed or heard about. They are taught to write by reading others’ stories which they have not experienced or observed or heard about.

Through this process of taking others’ experiences and writing them down, the child becomes limited in his/her own creativity.

Some Similar Quotes

1. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. - Sylvia Plath

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2. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. - Ray Bradbury

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3. The road to hell is paved with adverbs. - Stephen King

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4. Fiction is the truth inside the lie. - Stephen King

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5. The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But... - Stephen King

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More Quotes By Richard Peck

1. We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

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2. [A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

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3. The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

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4. Only the nonreader fears books.

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5. Never worry about a book corrupting a child. Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books.

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