top of page
"I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Writing quotes

"Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal."

"You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world."

"As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience."

"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."

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

"I'd be somewhat of a lousy writer if I didn't know what to say."

"A true piece of writing sets you free."
Explore more quotes by James Schuyler

"It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing."

"In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively."

"However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others."

"The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate."

"To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity."

"It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)."

"I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem."
bottom of page