A Quote by Renee Watson

There are many writers who have influenced me and who I enjoy reading, but Lucille Clifton and Gwendolyn Brooks are at the top of the list. — © Renee Watson
There are many writers who have influenced me and who I enjoy reading, but Lucille Clifton and Gwendolyn Brooks are at the top of the list.
I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work.
I do not regret the years I spent reading the traditional canon of white male writers in school. I do regret reading so little else there: Austen, George Eliot and occasionally Woolf, likewise Wright, Ellison, Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
I was reading Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, but these weren't the poets that influenced me. I think Gwendolyn Brooks influenced me because she wrote about Chicago, and she wrote about poor people. And she influenced me in my life by giving me a blurb. I would see her in action, and she listened to every single person. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm tired. I gotta go." She was there, and present, with every single person. She's one of the great teachers.
When I started writing poetry, it was always in very hip-hop influenced spaces: Someone would teach a Nas song side-by-side with a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and we'd talk about the connections between those things.
I've been influenced by so many different writers along the way - from Charles Dickens, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, John D. McDonald, and so many others - that it would take a page or two to list them all.
I love, loved, loved 'We Real Cool' by Gwendolyn Brooks.
I'm always in search of those books where you don't want to stop reading, and 'Me Before You' is at the top of that list.
I was lucky that when Lorne Michaels came looking for women comedy writers, there weren't too many in New York at the time. I was at the top of a very short list. I think that was all good fortune.
I was lucky that when Lorne Michaels came looking for women comedy writers, there werent too many in New York at the time. I was at the top of a very short list. I think that was all good fortune.
I think a lot of young aspiring writers get misdirected; they think 'I ought to write this, even though I enjoy reading that'. What you have to do is write what you enjoy reading.
I enjoy being influenced by other writers.
Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it's one of those things that I can't really separate from my career as a writer.
I read continually and don't understand writers who say they don't read while working on a book. For a start, a book takes me about two years to write, so there's no way I am depriving myself of reading during that time. Another thing is that reading other writers is continually inspiring - reading great writers reminds you how hard you have to work.
I've published many biographies over the years and enjoyed working with writers on their research, discussing it, thinking about it and how it revealed their subject - and one day the impulse came to me to write a life of someone. I made a long list of possible subjects and [ Barbara] Stanwyck was on the list.
I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them.
Rose,” he said, forcibly trying to keep a serious tone, “I can think of many words to describe you, sexy and hot being at the top of the list. You know what’s not on the list? Sane.
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