If you want to write poetry, you must have poems that deeply move you. Poems you can't live without. I think of a poem as the blood in a blood transf…

- Ralph Fletcher

You don't learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matter…

- Ralph Fletcher

Here's the secret of writing: there is no secret.

- Ralph Fletcher

When someone you love dies, you get a big bowl of sadness put down in front of you, steaming hot. You can start eating now, or you can let it cool an…

- Ralph Fletcher

G.K. Chesterton once said: If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. I live by this philosophy when I teach writing. It seems to me vastl…

- Ralph Fletcher

The real meaning of a poem is to stop time.

- Ralph Fletcher

It's misleading to think of writers as special creatures, word sorcerers who possess some sort of magical knowledge hidden from everyone else. Writer…

- Ralph Fletcher

When students write from experience, they can breathe those specifics into their writing- dialect, odd smells, precise names of plants- that can anim…

- Ralph Fletcher

Good writing happens when human beings follow particular steps to take control of their sentences-to make their words do what they want them to do.

- Ralph Fletcher