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The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

— Gene Fowler without citation in Blythe Camenson (2002)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Attributed without citation in Blythe Camenson (2002) How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book. p. 188
Work: without citation in Blythe Camenson, 2002
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Gene Fowler

Sometimes I think it sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al (2000)

He has a profound respect for old age. Especially when it's bottled.

without citation in Judy Valon (2009)

All Gene Fowler quotes →

Topics

Writing

More quotes by Gene Fowler

Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free of rust in the movable parts of the mind.

Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961)

Men are not against you, they are merely for themselves.

Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961)

That man was so much larger than life that there's no scale by which to measure him. Most of Wilson's dialogue, if put down on paper, seems either vulgar or obscene.

A book is never finished; it's abandoned.

H. Allen Smith's The Life and Legend of Gene Fowler (1977)

What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.

Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gene Fowler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.