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Writing Quotes

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Writing Quotes

“Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them”

People Ifs Thinking Writing Ends Strong Fool Mets Good Things Opposition Pounds Opposing Unintelligent True Things

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.”

People Thinking Way Writing Mean Use Feelings Certain Attitude Seeing Influence Subjects Style Produce Reader Determination Atmosphere

Author:Randall Jarrell

“I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.”

Thinking Men Writing Matter Faces Written Land Definitions Suspects Pens Strokes Signatures Chopping

Book:A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There

Source: A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There

“I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.”

Thinking Writing Humans Human Beings Sentimental

Book:He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader

Source: He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader

“There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.”

Thinking Writing Littles Book Song Dying Damnation Swans Impotence This Society Deathbed Incense

Author:Maxim Gorky

“I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'”

Thinking Writing Hard Use Song Left Studios Nine

Author:Jessie J

“It's not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.”

Thinking Writing Persons Soul Matter Form Flow

Author:Anton Chekhov

“I mean, I'm always happy if I have, like, humiliating asshole things that I did. I think: Oh good, that's a good story. Because if you write about humiliating asshole things other people do it doesn't work as well. I mean, you can, but you can get away with it better if you talk about what an asshole you are. It's much easier.”

People Ifs Thinking Writing Wells Mean Stories Easier Get Away Good Story Humiliating Always Happy

Author:David Sedaris

“I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.”

People Thinking Writing Position Reader Smarter

Author:Susan Sontag

“My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment.”

Source: Conversations with Chinua Achebe

“What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.”

Source: Conversations with Chinua Achebe