There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them.
I write about personal experiences. I write about things that have happened to me and the people around me, so you just sort of keep this antenna up and on the lookout for things to say.
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!
As I experience life and go through things, that's what I write about.
I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.
You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.
The greatest compliment I get about my writing is when people say, 'How did you know so much about me?' And of course, the answer is very simple: 'I just observed myself without sentimentality.'
Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.
I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.
I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.
Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite writers. The Eyes of the Heart is beautiful and wise, full of insight, charm, and tenderness.
George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
Your writings should reflect wise thoughts.
When I'm out having the experiences, that's exactly what I'm doing: having the experiences. Then I can later reflect and write.
All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.
And that's the case with all of James McMurtry's songs. He never presents these characters for us to judge, but only to sympathize with. He has a capacity for compassion with every sketch that he makes with a person that he is not.
One might say that the novel is the genre that most predisposes one to a profound insight into the tremendous life around us, instead of putting forward one's own tiny ego as the centre of the universe.
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
I became hooked on 'In Treatment,' which was so finely written and performed. Such a simple idea, and yet it delved into very complex territory with real grace and humanity.
At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.
I owe thanks to a thoughtful, sophisticated readership hungry for challenging subject matter, for honest portrayals of parenthood, and for fiction whose meaning is neither obvious nor morally pat.
