Thomas McGuane
“Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.”
James Tate
“Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.”
George Saunders
“People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to write dialogue, maybe even how to construct a plot. But I can’t teach you how to have something to say.”
Ann Patchett
I became a writer by living in New York and seeing and hearing and feeling all the great, amazing and dangerous things the city endlessly assembles. And I also became a writer by avoiding serious commitment to anything else.”
Don DeLillo
Literature is the most noble of the professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.”
Sharon Olds
“All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.”
Kurt Vonnegut