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Joyce Carol Oates Quote: 'Writers are notoriously unable to know ...'

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I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
A. Scott Berg
Tags: Time Great Me
My father was among the first of his generation to look into writers who've become part of the American lit. canon. When he wrote his master's thesis on William Faulkner in the Forties, he couldn't find anybody on the faculty at Columbia University to oversee it because they didn't read Faulkner.
Antonya Nelson
Tags: Because He First
My first novel was called 'Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald,' about the difficulties of graduating from college, the longing and mourning you feel when all your promise seems to float away.
Ron Carlson
Tags: You About Your
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Lillian Hellman
Tags: About Had Would
For me, Fitzgerald was one of the great American writers of the last century; a wordsmith, a storyteller, a perfectionist.
Robert Littell
Tags: Great Me American
The best word to describe my father? Thoughtful. There was a tender quality to Dad that his sense of fun could sometimes mask. But, above all, he was sensitive and looked out for those he loved.
Jennifer Grant
Tags: Best Dad Out
If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.
Shelby Foote
Tags: You About Know
I think indie films have more of a fresh, experimental vibe about them, whereas studio films know what they want and can basically get it.
Kodi Smit-McPhee
Tags: About Think More
You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.
Regis Philbin
Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.
Emma Donoghue
Tags: Out Know Going
In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.
Lytton Strachey
Tags: Who Very His
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Andrew Carnegie
Tags: People Who How
surf wave sea water spray foam
A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.


Mohsin Hamid
Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.
Ciara Renee
I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.
Robert Wyatt
Tags: Good Just Really
I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.
Betty Smith
Tags: People About Who
During the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never thought about there being children in Iraq before.' And I thought, 'Well those poems did their job, because now they'll think about everything a little bit differently.'
Naomi Shihab Nye
Tags: War You Me
I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
Rebecca Stead
Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.
David Duchovny
Tags: Best Me Like
Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.
Joni Mitchell
Tags: Me Out His