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"When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!"
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"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
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Personal Development

"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
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Personal Development

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."
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Personal Development

"We write, edit, and rewrite the story of our own life employing descriptive words, metaphors, and symbols. Our lives are full of symbols including those supplied by nature and religion, which touch upon the mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Symbols inspire enduring hope by formulating idealist expectations."
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Personal Development

"I'm a fairly undisciplined writer."
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Personal Development

"Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person."
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Personal Development

"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
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Personal Development

"Pour your heart onto the page."
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Personal Development

"You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough."
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Personal Development

"One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane."
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"Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur."
Being

"I'm a writer who likes to be influenced."
Influence

"I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other."
People

"The subject matter of the stories on the surface... there seem to be a number of stories about travel."
Travel

"Once I start writing about something, it goes off rather fast, and sometimes details which might be interesting such as what the room looked like or what somebody said that was not exactly on the same subject tend to get lost."
Writing

"I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them."
People

"I never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet."
Thought

"Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception."
Advertising

"It takes a long time to publish a book."
Time

"When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!"
Writing
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