"I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer."

Writing, Day, Guilt, Years

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"I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer."

Exlpore more Writing quotes

"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."

Haruki Murakami, Japanese Writer

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"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher

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"A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can."

Debasish Mridha, American Author

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"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."

Stephen King, American Author

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"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."

Sylvia Plath, American Poet

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"Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea."

Terry Pratchett, English Author

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"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."

A. D. Posey, American Poet

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"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."

Kilroy J. Oldster, American Author

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"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed."

Stephen King, American Author

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"An author's operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature."

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Explore more quotes by Rita Dove

"I write short stories, and I wrote a play."

Writing, Play

"If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer."

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"People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable."

People, Country

"I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry."

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"I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step."

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"Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet."

Being, Public, Voice

"My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends."

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"Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early."

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"To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you."

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"My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets."

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