Quotes About Writing

Két halott feküdt a brazil januárban, már rég szerettem volna írást így kezdeni, és ez kétségkívül ütÅ'sebb auftakt, mint az, hogy egy Esti Kornél ült a járdaszélen a pécsi júliusban.

Egy idézet Thomas Manntól – vagy GoethétÅ'l?, minden idézet vagy Thomas Manntól, vagy GoethétÅ'l való – mutatja az irányt: Író az, akinek gondot okoz az írás.

Don't just plan to write—write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

Writing lives forever, while you may not.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

when it comes to being a writer: getting out of your own way, and getting rid of the countless negative thoughts that tell you what a hopelessly uninteresting specimen of humanity you are.

I have always believed that if I pay strict attention while I am out in the physical world—and for me that often meant the natural world—the physical world will give me everything I need to tell my stories" (78). —Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

I believe—like religion—that the glimmer, the metaphor, if you will, knows a great deal more than I do. And if I stay out of its way, it will reveal itself to me. I will become not so much its keeper as its conduit, and I will pass its wisdom on to the reader, without actually getting in its way" (79).

There is something so pleasingly pure about having a task to be accomplished and then accomplishing it. It is the exact opposite of writing, and pretty close to the opposite of teaching. In both writing and teaching, nothing is ever finished, only finished enough to let go.

mantra that "I can write through anything" to

My feeling says there is history here. But sometimes a thing might feel true to me, not because it is, but because the writer believes it is.

Jincy Willett, Sam Lipsyte, Flannery O'Connor, and George Saunders. Oh, and I love Paul Rudnick in The New Yorker.

We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind.

The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.

Smashing clay pots is called iconoclasm, a good thing when it's needed. The failure to do it when needed is called idolatry, always a bad thing. In both writing and faith, we need to commit conceptual suicide again and again—if we are serious about the vastness of the treasure and the inadequacy of our frail, finite, and flawed words.

It is my personal belief that writing cannot be taught.

Le livre est un morceau de silence dans les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit se tait. Celui qui lit ne rompt pas le silence.

Un livre est un peu de silence entre les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit calme. Celui qui le lit ne rompt pas le silence.

I ink, therefore I ham.

Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn't know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn't know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it's necessary

I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized I couldn't find books that took me to all the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.