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Writer Quotes by Jesmyn Ward

30 Writer quotes by Jesmyn Ward

All Writer quotes Jesmyn Ward’s page

If you’re curious about how a celebrated novelist thinks about the act of writing, this set of thirty reflections from Jesmyn Ward offers a clear window. Her words cut to the heart of storytelling, showing both the discipline and the intuition that shape her work.

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I'm always curious about other writers' routines.

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Without the library, I would have been lost.

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I didn't start really focusing on writing until I was 24.

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I knew it would be painful to write a memoir.

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I think that fiction has a certain power.

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If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better…

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It's very hard to deal with true subject matter, especially when you're writing about such weighty issues.

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When I read 'Absalom, Absalom!,' I remember being really excited about it and telling all my friends they had to read it,…

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It took me a long time to write again because Katrina destroyed the home I loved, and that robbed me of hope.

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Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and…

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When I look back on my reading habits when I was really young, I was really drawn to stories about strong girls…

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Physical books are still my favorite, but I own an e-book reader. They're convenient for travel.

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I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones'…

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I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through…

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I think that the first book that made me think that I could try to be a writer - or that made…

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I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I…

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Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write…

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I try to treat writing as part of my daily routine: I write for at least two hours, five days per week.…

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I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful…

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I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are…

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Faulkner's characters, too, were uneducated. They were deprived, but they were allowed to have very rich inner lives. I want to advocate…

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I have never written a novel that volleys back and forth between a couple of different first person perspectives. It's definitely a…

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When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth.…

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Writing 'Men We Reaped' broke me in different ways at different spots in the drafting process. The first draft was hard because…

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I couldn't run from that desire to tell stories, that desire to tell stories about us, and about the people I loved.

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The first writer that I think of immediately that I studied with at Michigan is Peter Ho Davies. He was really important…

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I've heard some writers say that they are obsessed with certain ideas and that they find themselves writing around the same obsession…

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In the past, I travelled with 'The Hero and the Crown' by Robin McKinley: I suffer from a fear of flying, and…

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I'm still a bit of a reading glutton, I think, because I browse, read a bit of the back copy, flip through…

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I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch,…

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More by Jesmyn Ward

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African…

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I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and…

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There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And acknowledging that…

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“The dream of her was the glow of a spent fire on a cold night: warm and welcoming.”

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The first writer that I think of immediately that I studied with at Michigan is Peter Ho Davies. He was really important to me,…

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I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta,…

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“Vines catch my arms, my head; we tear through until we break out into the clearing before the fence, the field, the barn, the…

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“Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee.”

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People give the South a bad rap. It's often stereotyped as backwards and close-minded and dogmatic, and all of those things have been true.…

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By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events…

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When I was a teenager, I was the only black girl at a small, private Episcopal school, where my tuition was paid by the…

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She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies,…

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I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people.

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When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested…

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“Lot of folks was in there for stealing food because everybody was poor and starving, and even though White people couldn’t get your work…

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