Great Writers Quotes - Page 7

• Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Copies

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• Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

  Thornton Wilder

  Giving, Awkward, Style

  Interview in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series", edited by Malcolm Cowley, 1958.

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• A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Stills, Good Writers

  Susan Sontag (2008). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• The great writer finds style as the mystic finds God, in his own soul.

  Havelock Ellis

  Soul, Style, Mystic

  havelock ellis (1923). “the dance of life”

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• The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Feelings, Three

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

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• I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.

  Fiona Shaw

  Running, Want, Exhausted

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.

  Anne M. Mulcahy

  Dad, Writing, Editors

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• English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all - there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform.

  Winston Churchill

  Inheritance, Literature, Treasure

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• Great writers zealously learn the craft of their profession so they can release the power and the depth of their imagination and experience.

  Leonard Bishop

  Imagination, Depth, Crafts

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• He's a great writer. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party. But you can't kill the guy. He's not human.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Crazy, Party, Drinking

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• I'm not a great writer.

  E. L. James

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

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• Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

  Norman Mailer

  Writing, Vision, Married

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• Television in the last few years has been where all the great writers are going. TV now is what indie film used to be.

  Jeff Daniels

  Years, Television, Lasts

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• Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

  Kara DioGuardi

  Bees, Bee Gees

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• A great writer created a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Watches, World

  1938 Enemies of Promise, ch.1.

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• It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

  Edward St Aubyn

  Together, Use, Conversation

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• If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.

  Julianna Baggott

  Writing, Men, Want

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• The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I've got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I'd love to be doing all that again.

  Ruth Buzzi

  Comedy, Hysterical, Hours

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• The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

  Andre Maurois

  Spring, Real, Writing

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• It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.

  Havelock Ellis

  Writing, Littles, Reason

  havelock ellis (1923). “the dance of life”

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• Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.

  Rebecca Miller

  Stories, Want, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I've been dreaming about having a press forever, like the '90s. I've always known so many great writers who aren't as connected to the publishing world as they should be, and I have the energy and the enthusiasm to sort of gather and promote people, so I've always thought someday I might embark on a big project like that.

  Michelle Tea

  Dream, People, Forever

  Source: therumpus.net

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• People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.

  Yann Martel

  Men, Sea, People

  Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

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• The measure of a great writer is not how many weeks his books spend on the best-seller lists, but how many years his books remain in print after his death.

  Cal Thomas

  Book, Years, Lists

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