"At the beginning of a novel, a writer……" — Walter Kirn
"At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down."
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Walter Kirn
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51 Quotes by Walter Kirn
Walter Kirn has 51 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but…
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The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at…
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Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate…
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Some strangers become more important to you than family, maybe because you're not expected to love them. You can leave…
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Reason leavened with a little wit (if possible) is the real alternative to hate speech, meaning that there's no better…
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A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
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In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth..
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Spirit was a by-product of activity, like the reflection from a spinning fan blade, and our souls in the end…
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Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's…
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The market is the only critic that matters.
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The best critic needn't be right, just interesting.
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I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie…
See all 51 quotes by Walter Kirn »
More Beginning Quotes
This quote is filed under Beginning Quotes,
one of 4,628 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our…
— Hannah Arendt
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Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came…
— Hannah Arendt
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A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole…
— Aristotle
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The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not…
— Aristotle
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But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place…
— Karen Armstrong
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When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men…
— Chinua Achebe
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The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'
— Margaret Atwood
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Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You…
— Kevyn Aucoin
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The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
— Saint Augustine
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It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
— Marcus Aurelius
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Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
— Marcus Aurelius
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India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never…
— Sri Aurobindo
See all 4,628 Beginning Quotes »