The writer doesn’t want to disclose or instruct or advocate, he wants to transmute and disturb. He cherishes the mystery, he cares for it like a fugitive in his cabin, his cave. He doesn’t want to talk it into giving itself up. He would never turn it in to the authorities, the mass mind. The writer is somewhat of a fugitive himself, actually. He wants to escape his time, the obligations of his time, and, by writing, transcendthem. The writer does not like to follow orders, not even the orders of his own organizing intellect. . Joy Williams
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded... - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought, " able to go from point to point in an orderly... - James J. Kilpatrick
  3. There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean — hell, I know that. - Stephen King
  4. Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver. - Patricia C. Wrede
  5. Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society. - Kayla Rae Whitaker
More Quotes By Joy Williams
  1. She was never going to seek gainful employment again, that was for certain. She'd remain outside the public sector. She'd be an anarchist, she'd travel with jaguars. She was going to train herself to be totally irrational. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>She'd fall in love with a...
  2. Katherine feels that she must have learned something about marriage from being married before that is now working to her benefit. However, she doesn't know quite what it is, or how, actually, it works.
  3. You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.
  4. That's nice, isn't it?" Edith said. "That little kid is so trusting it's kind of holy, but if his trust were misplaced it would really be holy.
  5. Imagination only fails us in the end, when the stories we tell ourselves have to stop.
Related Topics