Jerrica Olmo > Jerrica's Quotes

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.”
― John Braine, Becoming a Writer

“To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you. ”
― Michelle Richmond

“Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.”
― Jonathan Stroud