"Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff"
About this Quote
Hinton’s line is disarmingly plain, the kind of craft advice that dodges mystique and lands like a warning label. “Anything you read can influence your work” isn’t the romantic version of inspiration; it’s exposure science. She treats the writer’s mind less like a sacred well and more like a room with the windows open: whatever’s in the air gets in, whether you invited it or not. The subtext is a quiet rejection of the fantasy that talent alone keeps your voice “pure.” Voice, she implies, is porous.
The second clause does the real work: “so I try to read good stuff.” Not “important” stuff, not “correct” stuff, but “good” - a deliberately unpretentious filter that still carries teeth. It’s an ethics of input. If influence is inevitable, then taste becomes a responsibility, not a vibe. There’s also a professional humility here: even the author of The Outsiders frames herself as a student of sentences, still curating what gets to shape her.
Context matters. Hinton became famous young, writing for and about teenagers without condescension, at a time when youth culture was often treated as disposable. That background makes her pragmatism feel earned: she knows how quickly voice can be colonized by trend, cliché, and the blunt instruments of genre. The advice isn’t precious; it’s defensive. Read “good stuff” not to imitate it, but to keep your internal meter calibrated - to make it harder for the lazy rhythms of mediocre writing to become your default setting.
The second clause does the real work: “so I try to read good stuff.” Not “important” stuff, not “correct” stuff, but “good” - a deliberately unpretentious filter that still carries teeth. It’s an ethics of input. If influence is inevitable, then taste becomes a responsibility, not a vibe. There’s also a professional humility here: even the author of The Outsiders frames herself as a student of sentences, still curating what gets to shape her.
Context matters. Hinton became famous young, writing for and about teenagers without condescension, at a time when youth culture was often treated as disposable. That background makes her pragmatism feel earned: she knows how quickly voice can be colonized by trend, cliché, and the blunt instruments of genre. The advice isn’t precious; it’s defensive. Read “good stuff” not to imitate it, but to keep your internal meter calibrated - to make it harder for the lazy rhythms of mediocre writing to become your default setting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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