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The Writing Life Quotes

Browse 8 quotes about The Writing Life.

The Writing Life Quotes

“The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on.”

Work Poverty Paris The Writing Life Chapter 5 A Moveable Feast

Book:A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too.”

Writing Art Artist Reading Literature Reader Discipline Writer Read Write Writing Advice Artistry The Writing Life Annie Dillard

Book:The Writing Life

Source: The Writing Life

“I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world's indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit to a good grace of its hazards...But he has one compensation, Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as a theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.”

Freedom W Somerset Maugham The Writing Life

Book:Cakes and Ale

Source: Cakes and Ale

“The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”

Writing Author Writer Write Writing Advice The Writing Life Wip Annie Dillard

Book:The Writing Life

Source: The Writing Life

“You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.”

Writing Reading Space Reader Author Writer Write Writing Advice Personal Space Reads The Writing Life Annie Dillard

Author:Annie Dillard

“Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.”

“If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.”

Writing Art Poetry Literature Poet Writer Poetic Write Writing Advice Artistry Pretentious Pretentiousness The Writing Life

Book:The Writing Life

Source: The Writing Life

“Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.”

Writing Written Writer Writers Write On Writing Writes The Writing Life On Writing Well

Book:On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Source: On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction