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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."

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

"A true piece of writing sets you free."

"A writer travels through the heart again and again to express the beauty of its contents."

"The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine."
Explore more quotes by Rita Dove


"Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture."


"Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure."


"Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely."


"Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine."


"I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day."


"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."


"In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things."
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