Writing
Quotes
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When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Death in the Afternoon
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don�t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
In order to write about life first you must live it.
As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it - don't cheat with it.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays