Quotation of the Week for Writers: Ann Patchett
“Ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. But I can’t teach you how to have something to say.”
–Ann Patchett
Source: @Quotes4Writers
Posts Tagged‘Quotation of the Week’
Quotation of the Week: Joyce Carol Oates
“Novels begin not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming, in thinking not writing.”
–Joyce Carol Oates
Source: @TatianadeRosnay
(I find this particular quotation reassuring at the moment. How about you?)
Quotation of the Week for Writers: Maya Angelou
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
–Maya Angelou
Source: Goodreads
Quotation of the Week: Andre Dubus III
This post should really be titled “Quotations of the Week,” because I’m sending you to an item on WritersDigest.comthat features a number of thought-provoking quotations from author Andre Dubus III.
Here is the quotation that’s probably my favorite:
“Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don’t write at all.”
See which one(s) resonate with you.
Quotation of the Week: Gerald Stern (via Michael Steinberg)
“All writers are full-time readers. That’s our job description. When we have some free time, we write.”
–Gerald Stern
Quoted by Michael Steinberg, in a worthy post, “Reading Like a Writer,” on Steinberg’s new blog.
Quotation of the Week: Rebecca Makkai
“One of the first difficult lessons that I had to learn as a writer was to push my characters into doing really inappropriate things, whether it’s a criminal act in this really extreme case, or just saying something that a normal person would keep their mouth shut about, or forcing a confrontation. In everyday life we act really politely and we don’t always say what is on our mind and we don’t always get ourselves into messes. But you have no story unless you’re willing to push somebody to the brink. You find the moment where the character says something they wouldn’t normally say or does something they wouldn’t normally do. They go over that line and you have a story.”
–Rebecca Makkai
Source: This terrific, extensive interview in Trop. (FYI: We have a Q&A w/Rebecca right here on this site, too.)