Book Quote by Robert Olen Butler

“I once assigned a graduate class Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life—a book I love—and one of the students said, “It’s so effing high-minded it makes me want to go to the Kmart.” quote by Robert Olen Butler — Download Open image

““I once assigned a graduate class Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life—a book I love—and one of the students said, “It’s so effing high-minded it makes me want to go to the Kmart.””

Robert Olen Butler

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More by Robert Olen Butler

The ironic humor comes from the distance between what we understand about ourselves and what is truly going on in ourselves.

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“If all the artists you loved changed you, they'd hack you up in little piece and you'd never get back together. That, or you'd…

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“Most journals are repositories of great swatches of abstraction and generalization and self-analysis and interpretation and all that bad stuff. Don’t do that. But here’s a certain kind of journal that might be useful to you: at the end of the day or beginning of the next day, return to some event of the day that evoked an emotion in…

Robert Olen Butler

The only craft and technique you have legitimate access to is the craft and technique you forgot, that has dissolved itself into the unconscious...…

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Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on…

Robert Olen Butler

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing,…

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Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major…

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“And so, given the musical sensibilities Hatcher treasured in his earthly life, it is hard to exaggerate the severity of his torture at standing…

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All plot comes from the character's trying to get something, to achieve something, wanting, desiring, longing.

Robert Olen Butler

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In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless combining of…

Robert Olen Butler

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We are the yearning creatures of this planet.

Robert Olen Butler

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“I think, by the way, that’s why athletes are so superstitious. Because if you believe that your current batting streak depends on wearing a…

Robert Olen Butler

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Explore all 18 Robert Olen Butler quotes

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The Rosary is the book of the blind.

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It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn't mean you know anything about marketing. Or layout. Or editing. Or publicity. Or selling your books for foreign markets.Everyone can point to a few examples of people that have done very well for themselves self-publishing. But…

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