“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” — Mister Rogers
Category Archives: Quotes
Anne Rice: “Critics and perfectionists are destroyers. Writers create.”
Whether you want to be a great popular writer, or a literary writer, a poetic writer, an immortal examiner of the human condition, you must finish your writing in some readable form. You must finish a short story or you must finish a novel. Until you do that, until you have a finished work inContinue reading “Anne Rice: “Critics and perfectionists are destroyers. Writers create.””
Writing Advice that Resonates
“If you’ve written things that you’ve written the hell out of and you got the best cover you can, the best blurb you can and you’ve done the best promotion you can afford to do and it’s still not working for you, you should… (well, what I did… let me tell you what I did)…Continue reading “Writing Advice that Resonates”
Beverly Cleary
“I don’t necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I start with the part of the story that’s most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.” -Beverly Cleary
Jealousy by Anne Lamott
“Jealousy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer, and the most degrading. And I, who have been the Leona Helmsley of jealousy, have come to believe that the only things that help ease or transform it are (a) getting older, (b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and (c) using it asContinue reading “Jealousy by Anne Lamott”
Things We Can’t Forget
Facebook reminded me today that I posted this quote on this day last year. It’s a nice reminder why I write some of the things that I write, and why some of the things I want to write about – those things that haunt me – have yet to make it onto paper. I thinkContinue reading “Things We Can’t Forget”
Sebastian Junger: Why We Write
“I do this sort of split thing when I’m writing. I’m very aware that I’m writing for readers, and I do everything I can to engage them, to make my writing accessible and compelling. At the same time, I try to be completely disinterested in what I think people will like. I’m writing for myself.Continue reading “Sebastian Junger: Why We Write”
Gish Jen: Why We Write
“When I’m writing I’m unaware of myself. I’m in my characters, in the story. I know the writing is going well when I look at my watch and see that it’s ten p.m., and the last time I looked it was noon. My writing has always been very intuitive. When I start a piece IContinue reading “Gish Jen: Why We Write”
Rick Bass: Why I Write
“The stories we tell in fiction – stories of warning or celebration, stories of illustrative possibility – are important. When the shit really hits the fan for a civilization, artists can become more important than ever, in helping to bend a culture back to another direction, away from the impending and onrushing brick wall. IContinue reading “Rick Bass: Why I Write”
Pat Conroy: Why I Write
“I do not record the word exactly as it comes to me but transform it by making it pass through a prism of fabulous stories I have collected along the way. I gather stories the way a lepidopterist hoards his chloroformed specimens of rare moths, or a sunburned entomologist admires his well-ordered bottles of Costa RicanContinue reading “Pat Conroy: Why I Write”
Liz Durano 