Great Writers Quotes - Page 8

• In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers' books. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves. Joyce was a very great writer and he would only explain what he was doing to jerks. Other writers that he respected were supposed to be able to know what he was doing by reading it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Book, Reading, People

  Ernest Hemingway, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (1986). “Conversations with Ernest Hemingway”, p.117, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Writing, Editing

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

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• As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie - a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.

  Rick Wakeman

  Cousin, Class, Stuff

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• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, World, Want

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• The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Writing, Men, Worry

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• I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  Writing

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  Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Night, Journey

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• Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual.

  Steven Pinker

  Thoughtful, Style, Oral Tradition

  "Oaf of Office" by Steven Pinker, www.nytimes.com. January 21, 2009.

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• Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion.

  Tony Snow

  Confusion, Joy, Lust

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• I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

  Daniel Tammet

  Memories, Skills, May

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• The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

  William Butler Yeats

  Christian, Passion, Writing

  William Butler Yeats (1955). “Letters”

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• If you really think back to the great writers, there's a lot of happiness in Tolstoy; there's a lot of love, there's childbirth, and there's dances. And likewise in Shakespeare and even Cervantes, there's a lot of celebrations of the positive manifestations of life. Technically, I found it harder to do, so that's kind of a good late-life challenge - without getting sentimental or chirpy.

  George Saunders

  Thinking, Challenges, Sentimental

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

  Anais Nin

  Writing, Commitment, Culture

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence.

  Virginia Woolf

  Character, Atmosphere, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2982, Delphi Classics

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• When I was in law school I was taught that the great writers were people like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes Jr. and [Benjamin N.] Cardozo. But you go back and read their prose and it's sort of perfumed and very ornate and show-offy. And they're constantly striving for these abstractions that seem archaic nowadays.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  School, Law, People

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Years, Lost, Court

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• I'm just in profound gratitude that we get to go back and work on a show that we love, with amazing actors and great writers, and be a part of the Marvel universe. As with all of the characters in Jessica Jones, Trish has an alias.

  Rachael Taylor

  Gratitude, Character, Profound

  Source: collider.com

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• My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.

  Neil Gaiman

  I Love Him, America, May

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• A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Men

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.

  Jim Woodring

  Mean, Writing, People

  Interview with Ross Simonini, staging.believermag.com. 2008.

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• I'm a strong believer that you have to have an equal opportunity to fail and to try things that are hard. I always tell my students, "Don't just take things that are easy for you. If you're really good at math, don't take just math. Take classes that make you write. If you're a really great writer, but bad at math, take math and make yourself work your way through it."

  Condoleezza Rice

  Strong, Writing, Math

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

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• On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Order, Giving, Use

  "The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers" by Random House, (p. 29), 1980.

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• Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Black, Crafts, Demand

  Henry Louis Gates (1989). “Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "racial" Self”, p.54, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.

  Angela Carter

  Lonely, Writing, Thinking

  Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

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