quotes for writers
Oct. 14, 2010
“The ordeal is part of the commitment”
“I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.” — Philip Roth
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Oct. 8, 2010
The Cure for Procrastination
Merlin Mann’s advice: first, care.
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Sep. 29, 2010
Bellow on Inspiration
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” — Saul Bellow (via)
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Sep. 23, 2010
What “finished” means to a writer
“Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.” — Alain de Botton
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Sep. 19, 2010
The Wages of Worry
“It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.” — Alain de Botton
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Aug. 7, 2010
Richard Ford: “make something good”
“I don’t think of characters as people. I think of them as made objects of language. And their only purpose is to be pushed outward toward the reader.… There’s never a time in writing stories at which the characters do what some writers say, which is to take over from me and become the person [...]
Tags: quotes for writers · Richard Ford
Aug. 4, 2010
DeLillo: “The writer leads”
Don DeLillo’s 1997 letter to Jonathan Franzen: *The writer leads.*
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Jul. 19, 2010
Fitzgerald on creating characters
“Start out with an individual and you find that you have created a type — start out with a type and you find that you have created nothing.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jul. 9, 2010
Flaubert on Life and Work
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” — Gustave Flaubert
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