Creative writer Quotes

“For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.”

“This is what itmeans to create: not to make something out of nothing, but to make order out of chaos. A creative scientist or historian does not makeup facts but orders facts; he sees connections between them rather than seeing them as random data. A creative writer does notmake up new words but arranges familiar words in patterns which say something fresh to us.”

“You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.”

“If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged role.”

“The creative writer is compulsively concrete . . . . His fictional house should be haunted by ideas, not inhabited by them; they should flit past the windows after dark, not fill the rooms. The moment anyone tries to make poems or stories of ideas alone he is at the edge of absurdity; he can only harangue, never interest and persuade, because ideas in their conceptual state are simply not dramatic. They have to be put into the form of people and actions . . .”

“Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle.”