Quotes About Writers

Nowhere in the New Testament can one find evidence advocating that the writers went outside the boundaries of the Old Testament text to gain their view of the Messiah, or that they just rejected outright what these texts taught about the coming one. The "story" the early church told was the story of the promise-plan of God and the line of the "seed" that would end in David's final son, Jesus. This was the gospel they proclaimed.

My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests. Writing books begins in talking about it, like most human projects, and in being close to those who have already done what you propose to do.

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.

I'm at the mercy of Editors, who are hidden behind panels and are never seen by mortal eyes.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

As a rough rule, it seems that writers fall into two camps. There are those who delight in rousting the truth from its concealment amid pieties and convention. If they must strip-mine the world to expose its hypocrisy, they will do so, even if they leave a landscape barren of hope. Then there are those writers who prefer to remythologize life on earth, finding it rich with strange congruences and possibilities.

I am still, relentlessly, reading Agee, and Flannery, too. Two of the writers who fired me to write post–Marine Corps, when I needed it, were Mr. McGuane and Mr. Harrison, and their books are always nearby, well thumbed. And Kawabata and James Salter, both of whom floor me.

Because of their impact on our memories, writers rule. They wield the instrument by which our world is organized.

History is written by the victors. Legends are woven by the people. Writers fantasize. Only death is certain. "To Die for One's Country is Glorious," p. 131

I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.

What these writers share to one degree or another is the recognition that Jesus' message was tightly rooted to his Jewishness and operated in a more messianically inclined direction, pushing them into the Christianity side of the spectrum.

I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.

Writers (of supernatural fiction), who used to strive for awe and achieve fear, now strive for fear and achieve only disgust.

Attending the Sun Dance] There was a smattering of tourists, both serious and recreational. Professors of anthropology and ethnology. Writers of fact and other fiction. A family from Wisconsin pausing on their long, sacred pilgrimage to The Land of Disney.

No one has claim to originality in literature; all writers are more or less faithful amanuenses of the spirit, translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes.

indeed but little is said of Him by secular historians of His time. Few and short as are the allusions to Him made by non-scriptural writers in the period immediately following that of His ministry, enough is found to corroborate the sacred record as to the actuality and period of Christ's earthly existence.

Dear FB Friends, Fuck Facebook!!!!! — It has proven to be worthless as a book-selling device, and is nothing but a repository for perverts, reparation-seekers, old buddies looking for handouts, syphillitic ex-girlfriends looking for extra-curricular schlong and hack writers begging for blurbs.

There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it's a very close relationship. We can do that because we're so small.

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

Readers find most flashbacks intolerable. Yet a lot of neophyte writers flash back like mad. Why? No one but the Creator of the Universe knows for sure, but there is a likely answer: they find the conflicts in the "now" of the story produce anxiety in themselves.

Theme. It's something a lot of writers don't like to think about. It brings up painful memories of high school English class ("Write a 1,000 word essay on the theme of The Great Gatsby, and be sure to relate the green light on Daisy's dock with the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. Due tomorrow.")

A great deal was riding on this argument for Twain, for if the man from Stratford had indeed written the plays, Twain's mostly deeply held beliefs about the nature of fiction and on how major writers drew on personal experience would be wrong.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists.