• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

William Landay

Official website of the author

  • Books
    • All That Is Mine
    • Defending Jacob
    • The Strangler
    • Mission Flats
  • News
    • Updates
    • Blog
  • Events
    • Appearances
    • Podcasts
    • Print
  • About

quotes

Ian McEwan on creating characters

September 25, 2023

It’s something like a person walking toward you through a mist: Every sentence you write about her makes her a little clearer.

— Ian McEwan

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Ian McEwan, quotes, quotes for writers, writing tips

A natural style

December 31, 2015

When we encounter a natural style, Pascal says, we are surprised and delighted, because we expected to find an author and instead found a man.

James Wood

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: quotes

An artist’s name

October 10, 2014

The ancient masters of Japanese art were allowed to change their name once in their lifetime. They had to be very selective about the moment in their career when they did so. They would stick with their given name until they felt they had become the artist they aspired to be; at that point, they were allowed to change their name. For the rest of their life, they could work under the new name at the height of their powers. The name change was a sign of artistic maturity.

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

Filed Under: Art, Creativity Tagged With: quotes

Resisting the present

September 28, 2014

To judge by the clock, the present moment is nothing but a hairline which, ideally, should have no width at all — except that it would then be invisible. If you are bewitched by the clock you will therefore have no present. “Now” will be no more than the geometrical point at which the future becomes the past. But if you sense and feel the world materially, you will discover that there never is, or was, or will be anything except the present….

For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace it nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.

Alan Watts

Filed Under: Creativity, Writing Tagged With: Alan Watts, quotes

Whose voice does the reader hear?

July 2, 2014

I don’t believe that poems are written to be heard, or as Mill said, to be overheard; nor are poems addressed to their reader. I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem. You stand behind the words and speak them as your own — so that it is a very different form of reading from what you might do in a novel where a character is telling the story, where the speaking voice is usurped by a fictional person to whom you listen as the novel unfolds.

Helen Vendler

Filed Under: Books, Poetry Tagged With: quotes

“The extension of our sympathies”

February 28, 2014

The greatest benefit we owe the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies… Art is the nearest thing to life, it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

George Eliot

Filed Under: Art, Books Tagged With: George Eliot, quotes

Quote of the Day

December 31, 2012

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

— Winston Churchill

Filed Under: Odds & Ends Tagged With: quotes, Winston Churchill

Quote of the Day

December 8, 2012

Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.

Mike Tyson

Filed Under: Odds & Ends Tagged With: Mike Tyson, quotes

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

  • Amazon
  • Facebook
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram
  • Threads