“It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live.”–Henry Beston
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Henry Beston on the Earth as Poetry
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Category Archives: Quotes
Philip Roth on the Best Readers
“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”–Philip Roth
Tom Wolfe on the Problem with Fiction
“The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.”–Tom Wolfe
John Cheever on Usefulness
“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.”–John Cheever
Edmund Wilson on Reading
“No two persons ever read the same book.”–Edmund Wilson
(Still a favorite quote of mine.)
Mary Shelley on Chaos
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.”–Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin)Shelley
Stendhal on a Good Book
“A good book is an event in my life.”-Stendhal, The Red and the Black
Jim Thompson on Story and Plot
“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot–things are not as they seem.”–Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson’s philosophy about plot aligns closely with mine. What is your attitude towards the subject? Please share in the comments!
Max Ernst on Grasping Mutually Distinct Realities
“Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.”–Max Ernst
Terry Pratchett on the First Draft
“The first draft is just telling yourself the story.”—Terry Pratchett
