Great Writers Quotes - Page 3

• Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.

  Karrine Steffans

  Wells, Good Writers, Knows

  "FEATURE: Karrine Steffans, Head of the Class". XXL Interview, www.xxlmag.com. July 13, 2009.

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• Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.

  Christopher Bollen

  School, Artist, Talking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

  Alain de Botton

  Teacher, Writing, Careers

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

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• There is an interview given by [ Jean-Paul] Sartre in the USA where he is asked what the future of French literature is, and he replies that the next great writer of the future is [Albert] Camus.

  Catherine Camus

  Usa, Literature, Next

  Source: www.spikemagazine.com

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• Intellectuals of [Albert] Camus' age who had previously disliked him now appreciate him. And at that point we come back to literature, and it's agreed that he was always a great writer.

  Catherine Camus

  Appreciate, Age, Literature

  Source: www.spikemagazine.com

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• The author with the greatest influence on me is my friend Stephen Harrigan, who critiques everything I write before I even bother to show it to my agent or editor. He's a truly great writer - author of Gates of the Alamo and other books you might know of, and his instincts about what's working in a story, and what's not, are just about perfect. My books would be very different without his influence.

  Elizabeth Crook

  Book, Writing, Editors

  Source: www.elizabethcrookbooks.com

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• The Night Journal received two awards that I'm terribly proud of - -the Spur from Western Writers of America, and the Willa Literary Award from Women Writing the West. Both these groups are filled with great writers and good people.

  Elizabeth Crook

  Writing, Night, Two

  Source: www.elizabethcrookbooks.com

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• It's hard not to be enthusiastic when you like what you're doing and I love what I do. I love writing stories, I love coming up with ideas for new projects and I love the people I work with, because I work with great writers and artists and directors and actors.

  Stan Lee

  Writing, Artist, Ideas

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• [Doctor Cukrowicz] was basically a role where you have two diva actresses - Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson - and my role was to say, "And then what happened? Tell me more." But I wanted to do it was because a) it was Tennessee Williams, a great writer, and b) it was Richard Eyre, an amazing director. And to work with those two amazing women!

  Rob Lowe

  Two, Doctors, Tennessee

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Vitruvius, the great writer, architect and engineer, identified in his famous treatise on Architecture that the three values essential to any work of Architecture were: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas; or firmness, utility, and delight. Firmness meaning well built, solid and resistant; utility meaning useful and functional, and delight meaning beautiful.

  Santiago Calatrava

  Beautiful, Essentials, Three

  Source: www.archdaily.com

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• I read continually and don't understand writers who say they don't read while working on a book. For a start, a book takes me about two years to write, so there's no way I am depriving myself of reading during that time. Another thing is that reading other writers is continually inspiring - reading great writers reminds you how hard you have to work.

  Paul Lynch

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• We are living in an era of such interesting new forms, and certainly narrative non-fiction has emerged as a major form. People who are great writers don't have to write novels anymore.

  Daniel Mendelsohn

  Writing, People, Interesting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.

  Salman Rushdie

  Artist, Men, Thinking

  Source: pen.org

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• It's really hard to write a screenplay, it's nauseating. All those great writers that tried to write screenplays, they couldn't do it, most of them - John Faulkner, whoever, Aldous Huxley.

  Hampton Fancher

  Writing, Huxley

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how you learn how to do it. You don't learn how to write about jazz just from listening to jazz. You learn how to write by reading the great writers and how they worked, the great music critics.

  Gary Giddins

  Reading, Writing, Feelings

  Source: bigthink.com

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• It is fascinating to me that when the lists of the great writers are trotted out year after year, you often find lists without a single woman mentioned.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Years, Lists, Single Women

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

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• How many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth; you can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.

  Adam Hochschild

  Russia, Political, Revolution

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

  George Henry Lewes

  Artist, Phrases, Use

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• Don't be discouraged if you think you're not a great writer because terrible writers are successful in Hollywood

  David Seltzer

  Successful, Thinking, Hollywood

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• Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.

  Lynne Tillman

  People, Mysterious, Ghost

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I have to say that The Simpsons comes from a huge number of great writers headed by Al Jean, the show-runner, and the work that they do is really fantastic. It's a blast just to sit around with them in the writers' room and listen to all the filthy jokes that will never get on the air.

  Matt Groening

  Air, Numbers, Als

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 26, 2006.

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• I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.

  Adolf Hitler

  Winning, People, Movement

  Adolf Hitler (1939). “Mein Kampf: Complete and Unabridged, Fully Annotated”

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• He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.

  William S. Burroughs

  Modern, Beckett, Joyce

  Source: www.litkicks.com

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• The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful. And that was the real disappointment of the time. You'd see great writer-directors in the '90s becoming part of a system where financiers and movie stars could change the material. I came along just before all that happened.

  Parker Posey

  Stars, Disappointment, Real

  Source: www.elle.com

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• I see this quality [real interest and joy] in the work of [Pavel] Chekhov, of course, and [Alexei] Tolstoy and really just about any great writer.

  George Saunders

  Real, Joy, Quality

  Source: sojo.net

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