Malcolm Gladwell Quotes About Writing
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Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.
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Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.
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I write my books to challenge my own feelings and theories. Perhaps most surprising was what I learned about rice farming. It was really interesting to think of how different Asian and Western cultures are as a result of the kinds of agricultural practices that our ancestors used for thousands of years. The life of a Chinese peasant in the Middle Ages was so dramatically different from the life of a European peasant - night and day different.
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We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.
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When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.
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So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it's OK.
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As a writer, I know that - you write a first draft and then put it in a drawer. The longer I can put it in a drawer, the better off I am. So I structure my writing so that things can sit.
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My highest compliment is when someone comes up to me to say, "My 14-year-old daughter, or my 12-year-old son read your book and loved it." I cannot conceive of a greater compliment than that - to write something that as an adult I find satisfying, but also that manages to reach a curious 13- or 14-year-old.
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I don't go to an office, so I write at home. I like to write in the morning, if possible; that's when my mind is freshest. I might write for a couple of hours, and then I head out to have lunch and read the paper. Then I write for a little bit longer if I can, then probably go to the library or make some phone calls. Every day is a little bit different. I'm not highly routinized, so I spend a lot of time wandering around New York City with my laptop in my bag, wondering where I'm going to end up next. It's a fairly idyllic life for someone who likes writing.
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The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.
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We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.
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Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.
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When people reflexively write checks to institutions that have billions of dollars in the bank, they are essentially committing a moral crime. Your money could do good in this world and you're choosing instead to waste it. People have to do a better job of that. You've got to find places where your money's going to do some good and direct your dollars towards that institution.
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My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.
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