Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

— Lorine Niedecker

Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers to astound…

— George V Higgins

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.

— Simone de Beauvoir

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen…

— Pamela Adlon

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.

— Trish Stratus

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades,…

— Socrates

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all…

— Socrates

“Poet's Work" Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade I learned to sit at desk and condense No layoffs from this condensery”

— Lorine Niedecker

Tailor's work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the "trade" learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s],and one or more of my…

— Lucy Larcom

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

— Ernest Gaines

I've learned that writing a book and songwriting have a lot in common - it's all about the honesty and connection with the audience.

— Jimmie Allen

I've learned as much about writing from songwriters as I have from other writers.

— Greg Iles

I've learned through writing that if something made me feel deeply or anything at all, it was worth it.

— Taylor Swift

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part…

— Ernest Hemingway