top of page
.png){kind=small}
More
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The hard fact is that writing is available to readers because of market factors as much as particular writing talent."
Author Name
Personal Development
"You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I believe that to be the world's greatest livingwriterthere must be somethingterribly wrong with you.I don't even want to be the world's greatestdead writer.just being dead would be fairenough."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."
Author Name
Personal Development
More
"I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers."
People
"There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry."
Reading
"There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints."
Life
"I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step."
Writing
"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."
Love
"I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!"
Dream
"The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings."
Time
"It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded."
Education
"If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level."
Trust
"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
bottom of page