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"Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays."
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"Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists."

"A true piece of writing sets you free."

"Through writing, an author opens the window of his heart through which a reader can see the inner self of the author."

"Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it."

"What is your advice to young writers? "Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes."
Explore more quotes by James Merrill

"Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images."

"He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get, oh, 500 to 600 words an hour. Better than gasoline."

"At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw."

"And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five."

"But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice."

"Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication."

"Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in the poem."
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