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WRITINg quotes
Art (literature) is not a branch of pedagogy.
The artist (in literature) appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Any man who will look into his heart and honestly write what he sees there, will find plenty of readers.
If I were authorized to address any word directly to our novelists, I should say: Do not trouble yourself about standards or ideals, but try to be faithful and natural.
Everything which I have created as a poet has had its origin in a frame of mind and a situation in life; I never wrote because I had, as they say, found a good subject.
For myself I live, live intensely and am fed by life, and my value, whatever it be, is in my own kind of expression of that.
A poem or story, though published in the biggest United States magazine of the newsstand type is not published at all; the fight has to begin all over again if it is to win any place as a "classic," even for a year!
Writing is like religion. Every man who feels the call must work out his own salvation.
The most poignantly personal autobiography of a biographer is the biography he has written of another man.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.
There seems to be no physical handicap or chance of environment that can hold a real writer down, and there is no luck, no influence, no money that will keep a writer going when she is written out.
The psychologist knows that what makes for supreme greatness in writing fiction is not intelligence nearly so much as half a dozen other traits.
The writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.
A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure in which he reveals to us the inner working of his soul.
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