"I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading"
About this Quote
Kuralt’s line punctures the romantic fantasy of the solitary genius tapping pure originality onto the page. “Writing is derivative” isn’t self-deprecation so much as a journalist’s reality check: every sentence is downstream from something you’ve absorbed - facts, voices, cadences, arguments, even the rhythms of ordinary talk. In two quick beats, he reframes “derivative” from an insult into a craft principle: influence is inevitable, so you might as well curate it.
The subtext carries an ethic. Kuralt isn’t just praising reading as self-improvement; he’s defending the idea that style and judgment are learned through immersion. Good reading trains your ear for clarity and compression, your eye for structure, your sense of what’s been done to death and what still feels alive. It’s also a quiet rebuke to the careerist temptation to treat writing as mere output. If your inputs are thin, your prose will be thin; if your mental library is rich, your sentences have options.
Context matters: Kuralt came up in an era of mass media where credibility was built on voice and trust, not personal branding. For a journalist, “derivative” also signals accountability. Your work is stitched from reported material and public language; you don’t get to pretend it came from nowhere. The kicker is that it’s liberating. If writing begins with reading, then the path to better prose isn’t mystical inspiration - it’s attention, appetite, and the humility to learn from other people’s pages.
The subtext carries an ethic. Kuralt isn’t just praising reading as self-improvement; he’s defending the idea that style and judgment are learned through immersion. Good reading trains your ear for clarity and compression, your eye for structure, your sense of what’s been done to death and what still feels alive. It’s also a quiet rebuke to the careerist temptation to treat writing as mere output. If your inputs are thin, your prose will be thin; if your mental library is rich, your sentences have options.
Context matters: Kuralt came up in an era of mass media where credibility was built on voice and trust, not personal branding. For a journalist, “derivative” also signals accountability. Your work is stitched from reported material and public language; you don’t get to pretend it came from nowhere. The kicker is that it’s liberating. If writing begins with reading, then the path to better prose isn’t mystical inspiration - it’s attention, appetite, and the humility to learn from other people’s pages.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
