Quotes from Gordon Lish

The secret of good writing is telling the truth.

It's not what happens to people on the page; it's about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.

Don't have stories; have sentences.

He came to chat with me the day of my being discharged, advising that I not stay at the dog fight until the last dog was dead. I was a kid and made little counsel. Now that I am a bigger kid, I see the value--belatedly--added. Yet I also see the loss of life in the protecting, first of all, of oneself. Better to give oneself away. Dead f*ck the dog and so on.

I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance.

My bet is you are going to be really refreshingly impressed with it, or by it, which I have to tell you is what I myself was when the woman involved in the event disclosed her heart to me.

Era a sensação que eu tinha - era o que sentia. Quando eu tinha seis anos, eu tinha a sensação de que eu era aquele que tinha que observar as coisas para as pessoas, que tinha que ver as coisas para as pessoas, que se eu não fizesse isso, então elas não seriam vistas.

Never be sincere - sincerity is the death of writing.

I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire.