A Quote by Jennifer Egan

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

Jennifer Egan

Quote Topics

Bad Bad Stuff Badly Base Because Better Build Forms Often Something Something Better Stuff Unafraid Which Willing Write

Quote Author

Jennifer Egan
American - Novelist
Born: September 7, 1962

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Jennifer Egan

We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.

Jennifer Egan

You've got to write badly. If you write badly at least you've got something to rewrite. If you're scared to write badly, then you've got nothing.

Tony Grisoni

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.

Megan Amram

Upgrade your user, not your product. Value is less about the stuff and more about the stuff the stuff enables. Don't build better cameras - build better photographers.

Kathy Sierra

We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that's something we're proud of.

Mark Zuckerberg

We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.

Julia Cameron

There's a portion of the movie where something bad happens to me, and I lose my clothes along the way, so essentially I'm wearing a bra and trousers. There are certain requirements, but luckily I have a good base because I work out often.

Gwyneth Paltrow

I go through a lot of bad stuff, because most of the stuff that's written is pretty bad. But occasionally something comes along that's good, and I want to do it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

We used to write this down by saying, 'move fast and break things.' And the idea was, unless you are breaking some stuff you are not moving fast enough. I think there's probably something in that for other entrepreneurs to learn which is that making mistakes is okay. At the end of the day, the goal of building something is to build something, not to not make mistakes.

Mark Zuckerberg

You're often looking at writing from writers who, for the most part, are working in forms that traditionally fit into other genres. But sometimes, in the midst of their better-known stuff, there's this wayward thing, and because it's wayward it isn't considered representative of their work, so it falls through the cracks.

John D'Agata

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many 'bads' - bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even 'bad' white males. Only, when you write about 'bad' white males, they don't complain about it. And need I say that there are 'good' blacks, 'good' homosexuals and 'good' women?

Charles Bukowski

I truly believe that writing is a continuum - so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better. I don't write essays as often as I should.

Chris Abani

And that's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under.

Edward Snowden

Some years ago I was working on some forms which were vase forms with a fairly narrow base, and it was after [Hans] Coper had died that I saw an exhibition of his, a catalogue from an exhibition, and he was showing some forms which were made by cutting and joining a lot of different parts together to create what he called a spade form, which you can imagine looks a little bit like a shovel upside down.