Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories save you. Jincy Willett
About This Quote

In her book "A Changed Man," author Susan Meiselas describes the process she goes through when she is making a film. In this passage, Meiselas describes how she thinks about her words and what they mean to the story of the film. She believes that stories actually save you, and that by experiencing them yourself you can see how stories can affect others.

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  3. We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. - B.F. Skinner
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More Quotes By Jincy Willett
  1. ...(W)here there's drama, there's crap.
  2. Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.
  3. (N)ot writing was hard work, almost as hard as writing.
  4. Arithmetic is the death of story.
  5. All plots are cliche.
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