quotes for writers

Dec. 8, 2011

How to Start

*The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.* Alain de Botton

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May. 4, 2011

Orhan Pamuk: “A writer is…”

Orhan Pamuk: “A writer is someone who … turns inward.”

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Apr. 29, 2011

Write because you feel like writing

“All this advice from senior writers to establish a discipline — always to get down a thousand words a day whatever one’s mood — I find an absurdly puritanical and impractical approach. Write, if you must, because you feel like writing, never because you ought to write.” – John Fowles (quote)

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Mar. 7, 2011

Reading vs. Writing

Sometimes I think a writer should make up his mind whether he’s going to be a writer or a reader. There isn’t time for both. — Jessamyn West (via The Paris Review). That is exactly how I feel: can’t read when I’m writing, can’t write when I’m reading.

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Feb. 7, 2011

What to Write

“Write about the thing that frightens you the most.”

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Jan. 13, 2011

Malamud: “work in uncertainty”

A quote from Bernard Malamud: *Teach yourself to work in uncertainty…*

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Jan. 4, 2011

Fuck you, Melville!

Junot Diaz coins a new motto for slow writers everywhere, like me.

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Dec. 23, 2010

Fitzgerald: What people are ashamed of

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Dec. 16, 2010

Salman Rushdie: writing out of “your best self”

In a video interview at Big Think, Salman Rushdie explains that “when you write, you … write out of what you think of as your best self.”

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Oct. 27, 2010

Updike: Words that enter in silence and intimacy

“I think ‘taste’ is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should [...]

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