Ends Quote by Randall Jarrell

I cannot conceive why people will always mix up my own character and opinions with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet,…

— Anonymous

“Cut everything superfluous,' Pound had said. 'Go in fear of abstractions. Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.”

— Paula McLain

“Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on.”

— Philip Roth

When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra…

— Laura Riding

“Quite often, too, a writer who has for a time been believed to possess a great store of ordinarily profound ideas, and who is…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow…

— Diane Johnson

As a writer, you have control: You can play around with your own thoughts and when you find those insufficient, draw upon others': their…

— Marty Nemko

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion…

— Carl Sagan

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

— John le Carre

“For a writer, I'm not sure that feeling of knowing you've just written something good and strong can be trumped. Not because it means…

— Cara Rosalie Olsen