Donald Hall Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

  Donald Hall

  Hard Work, Writing, Desire

• Work is style, and there is style without thought; not in theory, only in fact. When I take a sentence in my hand, raise it to the light, rub my hand across it, disjoin it, put it back together again with a comma added, raising the pitch in the front part; when I rub the grain of it, comb the fur of it, re-assemble the bones of it, I am making something that carries with it the sound of a voice, the firmness of a hand. Maybe little more.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Light, Hands

  Donald Hall (2004). “Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected”, p.50, University of Michigan Press

• I want to sleep like the birds then wake to write you again without hope that you read me.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Sleep, Bird

  Donald Hall (2007). “White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006”, p.365, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Goal, Reason

  Donald Hall (2004). “Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected”, p.154, University of Michigan Press

• If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Goal, Trying

  Donald Hall (2004). “Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected”, p.155, University of Michigan Press

• Of course newspaper sportswriting is mostly terrible - and of course it is usually the best writing in the paper.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Paper, Terrible

• To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Two, Goal

  Donald Hall (1988). “Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982-1988”

• Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.

  Donald Hall

  Writing, Today, Engines

  Donald Hall (1994). “Death to the death of poetry: essays, reviews, notes, interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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