Admitting Quote by Leslie Jamison

I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would…

— Oscar Hijuelos

“An author has to fit into the skin of her characters, to imagine being trapped by unfortunate and sometimes violent circumstances she herself has…

— Loretta H. Marion

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

— Doris Lessing

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness.

— Anonymous

Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with…

— Dana Gioia

Authors have odd relationships with their creations They owe their fame and fortune to their characters but feel enslaved by them.

— Anthony Horowitz

You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that…

— Will Self

The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.

— Willa Cather

The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the…

— Walt Whitman

“Aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in…

— Harold Bloom

Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one's ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and…

— Paul Goodman