Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.
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Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.
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The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
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Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.
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The writer must write what he has to say not speak it.
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Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it ...
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All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that ha...
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You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.
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A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
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What you don't write is often more important than what you do
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All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
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Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job.
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World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the write...
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His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention out of his experience should produce a truer account than ...
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Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.
