Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Talent in writing is an innate quality that cannot be altered, much like a person's handedness.
In this quote, Stephen King emphasizes that the fundamental abilities of a writer are inherent traits. This suggests that while skills can be developed and refined through practice, the core talent that drives a writer's creativity and expression is something that is predetermined and cannot be fundamentally changed.
Themes
TalentWritingInnateCreativityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop to explain that innate talent is essential for certain literary pursuits.
More from Stephen King
All quotes →Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Stephen KingRead
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Stephen KingRead
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen KingRead
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Stephen KingRead
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
Stephen KingRead
Similar quotes
It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.
Susan L. TaylorRead
For 300 years, higher education was not disruptable because there was no technological core.
Clayton M. ChristensenRead
I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English.
Gary ShteyngartRead
You may speak but a word to a child, and in that child there may be slumbering a noble heart which shall stir the Christian Church in years to come.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
John W. GardnerRead
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
MoliereRead