"Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them……" — Walter Kirn
"Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five."
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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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At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound…
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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.
See all 51 quotes by Walter Kirn »
More Acknowledged Quotes
This quote is filed under Acknowledged Quotes,
one of 226 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want…
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I don't have acknowledged preferences of characters.
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I think that marriage is, dare I say it, between a man and a woman, hopefully for life and there…
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Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations…
— William J. Brennan
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I acknowledged that I owed my presidency to People Power. I resolved during my presidency that I would in turn…
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For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs…
— Ernestine Rose
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Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in…
— George Santayana
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The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming…
— Michael Polanyi
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The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be…
— James Madison
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A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized…
— James Weldon Johnson
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The denial of death is openly acknowledged as a significant trait of our culture. The tears of the bereaved have…
— Unknown Author
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I think that everybody has acknowledged that, in controlling foxes, hunting is hardly used as a method at all. To…
— Ian Cawsey
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