Bricklaying Quotes

• Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique.

  William Faulkner

  Technique, Surgery, Ifs

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

  William Faulkner

  Believe, Artist, Vanity

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

  William Faulkner

  Mistake, Errors, People

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

  William Faulkner

  Mistake, Believe, Writing

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying.

  F. R. Leavis

  Paradise, Lost, Strikes

  "Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry". Book by F. R. Leavis, 1936.

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• Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.

  Red Smith

  Writing, Bricks, Mortar

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• We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Fall, Inspiration, People

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.76, Cambridge University Press

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• Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Wall, Writing, Down And

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