“Sometimes language gets in the way of the story's feelings. The reader finds himself experiencing the language of the story rather than the story. The words sit there on the page like coins, with their own opacity, as though they're there for their own sake. "A man goes into a phone booth, stirring coins in his palm." "Stirring" is such an obviously selected word. You can feel the writer looking for the word as he sat at the typewriter.”
Quote by Leonard Michaels
Author
You May Also Like
“The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.”
Source: Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...
“Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”
“Editors are extremely fallible people, all of them. Don't put too much trust in them.”
“I'm modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.”
“The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.”
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Source: The Good Life According to Hemingway
Source: Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
