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"But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends."
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Explore more quotes by Anthony Doerr

"I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy."

"I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words."
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."

"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."

"Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope-and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing-that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so."

"The name of a great writer is usually bigger than the title of his book. Both literally and figuratively."

"It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well.....problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read."

"Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist."

"By applying their observational abilities along with full appliance of their logic and creative powers, writers attempt to create mental maps to share with other people regarding what they learned, think, and believe. The writer's vision can sway readers emotional state and in doing influence what they believe and how they behave."
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