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Mostly, we
authors must repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have
two or three great moving experiences in our lives --
experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the
time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and
dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and
illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever
before.
-- Source Unknown
An author
ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the
critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever
afterwards.
-- Source Unknown
All good
writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
-- Source Unknown
Writers aren't
people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot
of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors,
who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean
back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the
reflecting chandeliers.
-- Source Unknown
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Each writer is
born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has
perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and
Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have
10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become
more skillful at casting them.
-- Gore Vidal
1925-, American Novelist,
Critic
Many writers
who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but
time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be
made.
-- Gore Vidal
1925-, American Novelist,
Critic
Most bad books
get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to
justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then
the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book
will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for
outsiders.
-- Stephen Vizinczey
1933-, Hungarian Novelist,
Critic
You can never
correct your work well until you have forgotten it.
-- Voltaire
1694-1778, French Historian,
Writer
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