This all sounds great, but in reality most of us can discern between great writers, good ones, and bad ones, so in the end this kind of sentiment is a bit too...sentimental.
I'm not one for admiration of the literary skill - for be people like Nabakov and especially Conrad are the epitome of boring. Nabakov isn't so bad, I technically have only read Lolita and Laughter in the Dark, but Conrad is just terrible. Sure he can string words together in elaboarte sentences, but if Conrad today was to post on this forum, he'd be torn to shreds for purple prose. And rightly so, his short stories always seen to include up to 4/5 pages of description before the rest being story. I'm a firm believer in the cut to chase. Therefore the writers I admire are people like Stephen Moffat, who wrote some awesome episodes for Dr Who (like Blink). The writers of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes - magnificent all the way to the end. Any of the writers from Lost (that took some epic planning which mostly held up till season 6. I still think there is a lot to admire) I will concede though, Jeanette Winterson's
