writers

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
1be78c5	I think the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. When there are many writers all employing the same idiom, all looking out on more or less the same social scene, the individual writer will have to be more than ever careful that he isn't just doing badly what has already been done to completion. The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.	literature great-writers imitation novelist originality writers	Flannery O'Connor
c720075	For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.	writing writers	Richard Ford
1fb0bc7	In Ruth's view, they looked 'like a couple' because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them - they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such nonsense. (In part, it was because of her perverse ability to imagine anything that in this instance Ruth failed to imagine the obvious)	imagination writers	John Irving
40a3161	You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.	writers	Nick Hornby
28c76d4	"Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." --	writing life kafka writers	Ernst Pawel
ce352d1	One of the problems of being a storyteller is the cultivated ability to extrapolate; in every situation all the come to me.	writing imagination what-ifs storytelling writers	Madeleine L'Engle
cc1a739	Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him!	writers	John Irving
26a91be	New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world--throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.	writers new-york	Gillian Flynn
5889cab	If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers.	writing writers	Barbara W. Tuchman
6c834ac	She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.	creative-writing zen writing-process writers	Robert M. Pirsig
4a824e2	Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...	inspiration inspire writers	Matthew Pearl
dd6c510	Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else's.	nothing-to-say writing-craft practice writing-process writers	Robert M. Pirsig
fd7bb52	"It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children."	literary-freedom literature writing freedom-of-the-press first-amendment constitution free-speech writers	Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1fe2db6	These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.	writers	Matthew Pearl
ee6160b	Hammett used to be irritated by that and would answer that nobody ever deliberately wrote a potboiler, you just did the best you could and woke up to find it good or no good.	books potboilers dashiell-hammett william-faulkner quality sanctuary writers	Lillian Hellman
40aa0c2	We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.	writing writers-on-writing self-discovery writers	Jane Yolen
fac1ad8	Since language is the only tool with which writers can reflect and shape a culture, it must be transformed into art. Language is not a limitation on the art of literature; it is a glorification. It has been the scaffolding inside which nations and philosophies have been built, and the language of literature has added the ornamental pediment by which the culture is remembered.	literature writing legacy language writers	E.L. Konigsburg
dea0fbd	Business or profession?' 'I guess you'd call me a writer.' No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.	writers	Ray Bradbury
fac752f	Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child.	reading childhood writers	Roxane Gay
81b223f	A disproportionate number of stories are love stories - and what is homosexuality but a special narrative of love?	love-stories writers	Christopher Bram
440d8ed	Yet while Vidal writes best about power, politics, and history White's strengths are sex, art and - sometimes - love. Each tends to stumble when he enters the other's domain.	gore-vidal writers	Christopher Bram
c93507f	"A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having "such a representative life". And it's true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people."	edmund-white gay writers	Christopher Bram
543a216	Seventies macho was both a look - moustache, jeans, leather jacket - and an attitude - cool, heartless, virile - that were reactions against the old-style homosexuality of too much art and too much emotion.	seventies-macho writers	Christopher Bram
678ad7a	Most straight people, and many gay people, especially those who came of age more recently, don't understand how momentous and difficult coming out was to men and women of this generation. It seems so obvious now, so banal.	gay writers	Christopher Bram
97b4447	Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction.	winnie-the-pooh gay writers	Christopher Bram
81b858f	Allen Ginsberg startled the audience at OutWrite, the gay literary conference, when he confessed he didn't worry about AIDS since his sex life consisted chiefly of giving blowjobs to straight college boys.	gay writers	Christopher Bram
3d7d90c	An obsessed reader figured that 'Armistead Maupin' was an anagram for 'is a man I dreamt up'.	gay writers	Christopher Bram
43daaf0	Trust the tale, not the teller.	writers	Christopher Bram
099414d	There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.	second-rate gay writers	Christopher Bram
68c5046	A written man is more porous and accessible than a live one.	writers	Christopher Bram
a15b9cb	Stories have the ability to take us inside all kinds of life.	writers	Christopher Bram
f9031f4	Ginsberg was the favourite bohemian poet of straight college boys who wanted to transgress, and of gay college boys who were not yet ready to come out.	writers ginsberg	Christopher Bram
cdfdb65	Ruth Cole was a novelist; novelists are not at their best when they go off half-cocked. She believed that she would prepare what she was going to tell the police - preferably in writing.	planning writers	John Irving
7474937	Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.	bad-review writers	Hanif Kureishi
3dc0d4b	She was not a writer herself but she was a very good reader, passionate and eclectic in her tastes, and my father had great faith in her judgments.	writers	David Benioff
f24ce67	People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.	words influence james-baldwin writers	Edward P. Jones
65d4f15	"An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world	artists emotion writing spirituality life growth revelation writers	James Baldwin
fb2c7dd	You are your own best teacher. ~Jimmy Buffett	readers writers	Jimmy Buffett
0e2b81c	Everybody is Other in Maupin.	other gay writers	Christopher Bram
9ad87e1	Free to call a spade a spade (and a cock a cock).	writers	Christopher Bram
241e2f7	She knew full well that writers were sex-crazed bohemians who broke the rules and didn't go out to work.	truth writers	Jeanette Winterson
db92f40	In the new style, homosexuals and heterosexuals could be equally unhappy, equally happy, and equally screwed up.	writers	Christopher Bram
528b819	I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leant over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.	people characters lives writers	Diane Setterfield
4706689	Gay liberation did not create gay promiscuity. There was sex before there were marches, politics, or books - it was the best reason for being homosexual, it and love.	promiscuity liberation writers	Christopher Bram
4a94181	Didn't he know that heterosexuals needed to breed so homosexuals could even exist?	gay writers	Christopher Bram
d7e1339	Sociologists say a neighbourhood is perceived as gay if anywhere between 15 to 25 percent of the residents are homosexual.	gay-neoghbourhoods writers	Christopher Bram
3a69eda	The problem of self-loathing isn't new. What's new is the idea that it's the people with the history of greatest injustice who have the greatest right to be heard, and that the time has come for the arts not just to make room for them but to be dominated by them.	writing representation writers	Sigrid Nunez
b1e163a	Det var nastan som att upptacka en forfattare man inte last, fast man stoter i och for sig hela tiden pa forfattare som man inte har last medan det ar mycket sallsynt, atminstone i vuxen alder, att man plotsligt hittar en stor popartist som har gett ut massor av bra skivor. Oftast ar det fordomar snarare an okunnighet som gor att man missar stora artister, och fordomar ar svara att gora sig av med (det ar ju sa roligt att fa dem bekraftade).	prejudice music pop records writers	Nick Hornby
a725221	My horse is plodding down a path unspooling under her hooves like a ball of wool, only wider, while I think of ways to wake kings or small children or writers, all of whom seem to be constantly sleeping and dreaming of me in the seventh square on a horse with a mind of her own.	white-knight wool kings writers	Delia Sherman
f226234	We have a rich literature. But sometimes it's a literature too ready to be neutralized, to be incorporated into the ambient noise. This is why we need the writer in opposition, the novelist who writes against power, who writes against the corporation or the state or the whole apparatus of assimilation. We're all one beat away from becoming elevator music.	writing opposition revolution novelists writers	Don DeLillo
d502830	?No escribe uno acaso para entenderse mejor a si mismo y al mundo?	escritura writers	Carlos Ruiz Zafón
0c01090	The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.	writers	Michael Cunningham

1be78c5

I think the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. When there are many writers all employing the same idiom, all looking out on more or less the same social scene, the individual writer will have to be more than ever careful that he isn't just doing badly what has already been done to completion. The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.

literature great-writers imitation novelist originality writers

Flannery O'Connor

c720075

For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.

writing writers

Richard Ford

1fb0bc7

In Ruth's view, they looked 'like a couple' because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them - they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such nonsense. (In part, it was because of her perverse ability to imagine anything that in this instance Ruth failed to imagine the obvious)

imagination writers

John Irving

40a3161

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

writers

Nick Hornby

28c76d4

"Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." --

writing life kafka writers

Ernst Pawel

ce352d1

One of the problems of being a storyteller is the cultivated ability to extrapolate; in every situation all the come to me.

writing imagination what-ifs storytelling writers

Madeleine L'Engle

cc1a739

Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him!

writers

John Irving

26a91be

New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world--throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.

writers new-york

Gillian Flynn

5889cab

If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers.

writing writers

Barbara W. Tuchman

6c834ac

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.

creative-writing zen writing-process writers

Robert M. Pirsig

4a824e2

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...

inspiration inspire writers

Matthew Pearl

dd6c510

Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else's.

nothing-to-say writing-craft practice writing-process writers

Robert M. Pirsig

fd7bb52

"It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children."

literary-freedom literature writing freedom-of-the-press first-amendment constitution free-speech writers

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

1fe2db6

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

writers

Matthew Pearl

ee6160b

Hammett used to be irritated by that and would answer that nobody ever deliberately wrote a potboiler, you just did the best you could and woke up to find it good or no good.

books potboilers dashiell-hammett william-faulkner quality sanctuary writers

Lillian Hellman

40aa0c2

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

writing writers-on-writing self-discovery writers

Jane Yolen

fac1ad8

Since language is the only tool with which writers can reflect and shape a culture, it must be transformed into art. Language is not a limitation on the art of literature; it is a glorification. It has been the scaffolding inside which nations and philosophies have been built, and the language of literature has added the ornamental pediment by which the culture is remembered.

literature writing legacy language writers

E.L. Konigsburg

dea0fbd

Business or profession?' 'I guess you'd call me a writer.' No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

writers

Ray Bradbury

fac752f

Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child.

reading childhood writers

Roxane Gay

81b223f

A disproportionate number of stories are love stories - and what is homosexuality but a special narrative of love?

love-stories writers

Christopher Bram

440d8ed

Yet while Vidal writes best about power, politics, and history White's strengths are sex, art and - sometimes - love. Each tends to stumble when he enters the other's domain.

gore-vidal writers

Christopher Bram

c93507f

"A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having "such a representative life". And it's true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people."

edmund-white gay writers

Christopher Bram

543a216

Seventies macho was both a look - moustache, jeans, leather jacket - and an attitude - cool, heartless, virile - that were reactions against the old-style homosexuality of too much art and too much emotion.

seventies-macho writers

Christopher Bram

678ad7a

Most straight people, and many gay people, especially those who came of age more recently, don't understand how momentous and difficult coming out was to men and women of this generation. It seems so obvious now, so banal.

gay writers

Christopher Bram

97b4447

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction.

winnie-the-pooh gay writers

Christopher Bram

81b858f

Allen Ginsberg startled the audience at OutWrite, the gay literary conference, when he confessed he didn't worry about AIDS since his sex life consisted chiefly of giving blowjobs to straight college boys.

gay writers

Christopher Bram

3d7d90c

An obsessed reader figured that 'Armistead Maupin' was an anagram for 'is a man I dreamt up'.

gay writers

Christopher Bram

43daaf0

Trust the tale, not the teller.

writers

Christopher Bram

099414d

There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.

second-rate gay writers

Christopher Bram

68c5046

A written man is more porous and accessible than a live one.

writers

Christopher Bram

a15b9cb

Stories have the ability to take us inside all kinds of life.

writers

Christopher Bram

f9031f4

Ginsberg was the favourite bohemian poet of straight college boys who wanted to transgress, and of gay college boys who were not yet ready to come out.

writers ginsberg

Christopher Bram

cdfdb65

Ruth Cole was a novelist; novelists are not at their best when they go off half-cocked. She believed that she would prepare what she was going to tell the police - preferably in writing.

planning writers

John Irving

7474937

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.

bad-review writers

Hanif Kureishi

3dc0d4b

She was not a writer herself but she was a very good reader, passionate and eclectic in her tastes, and my father had great faith in her judgments.

writers

David Benioff

f24ce67

People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.

words influence james-baldwin writers

Edward P. Jones

65d4f15

"An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world

artists emotion writing spirituality life growth revelation writers

James Baldwin

fb2c7dd

You are your own best teacher. ~Jimmy Buffett

readers writers

Jimmy Buffett

0e2b81c

Everybody is Other in Maupin.

other gay writers

Christopher Bram

9ad87e1

Free to call a spade a spade (and a cock a cock).

writers

Christopher Bram

241e2f7

She knew full well that writers were sex-crazed bohemians who broke the rules and didn't go out to work.

truth writers

Jeanette Winterson

db92f40

In the new style, homosexuals and heterosexuals could be equally unhappy, equally happy, and equally screwed up.

writers

Christopher Bram

528b819

I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leant over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.

people characters lives writers

Diane Setterfield

4706689

Gay liberation did not create gay promiscuity. There was sex before there were marches, politics, or books - it was the best reason for being homosexual, it and love.

promiscuity liberation writers

Christopher Bram

4a94181

Didn't he know that heterosexuals needed to breed so homosexuals could even exist?

gay writers

Christopher Bram

d7e1339

Sociologists say a neighbourhood is perceived as gay if anywhere between 15 to 25 percent of the residents are homosexual.

gay-neoghbourhoods writers

Christopher Bram

3a69eda

The problem of self-loathing isn't new. What's new is the idea that it's the people with the history of greatest injustice who have the greatest right to be heard, and that the time has come for the arts not just to make room for them but to be dominated by them.

writing representation writers

Sigrid Nunez

b1e163a

Det var nastan som att upptacka en forfattare man inte last, fast man stoter i och for sig hela tiden pa forfattare som man inte har last medan det ar mycket sallsynt, atminstone i vuxen alder, att man plotsligt hittar en stor popartist som har gett ut massor av bra skivor. Oftast ar det fordomar snarare an okunnighet som gor att man missar stora artister, och fordomar ar svara att gora sig av med (det ar ju sa roligt att fa dem bekraftade).

prejudice music pop records writers

Nick Hornby

a725221

My horse is plodding down a path unspooling under her hooves like a ball of wool, only wider, while I think of ways to wake kings or small children or writers, all of whom seem to be constantly sleeping and dreaming of me in the seventh square on a horse with a mind of her own.

white-knight wool kings writers

Delia Sherman

f226234

We have a rich literature. But sometimes it's a literature too ready to be neutralized, to be incorporated into the ambient noise. This is why we need the writer in opposition, the novelist who writes against power, who writes against the corporation or the state or the whole apparatus of assimilation. We're all one beat away from becoming elevator music.

writing opposition revolution novelists writers

Don DeLillo

d502830

?No escribe uno acaso para entenderse mejor a si mismo y al mundo?

escritura writers

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

0c01090

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

writers

Michael Cunningham