Sketchbook: Archive

“

INTERVIEWER

What do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?

BRADBURY

Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

” —Ray Bradbury “The Paris Review”

Jun 20, 2012

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserves of things he knows or has seen. If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.” —Ernest Hemingway “The Paris Review”

Jun 19, 2012

“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people can see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.” —Ernest Hemingway “The Paris Review”

Jun 18, 2012

“It is hard enough to write books and stories without being asked to explain them as well. Also it deprives the explainers of work. If five or six or more good explainers can keep going why should I interfere with them?” —Ernest Hemingway “The Paris Review”

Jun 17, 2012

“

INTERVIEWER: How much rewriting do you do?

HEMINGWAY: It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

INTERVIEWER: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

HEMINGWAY: Getting the words right.

” —Ernest Hemingway “The Art of Fiction: The Paris Review Interview”

Jun 16, 2012

“[Hemingway] keeps track of his daily progress — “so as not to kid myself” — on a large chart made out of the side of a cardboard packing case and set up against the wall under the nose of a mounted gazelle head. The numbers on the chart showing the daily output of words differ from four hundred and fifty, five hundred and seventy-five, four hundred and sixty-two, twelve hundred and fifty, back to five hundred and twelve, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream.” —George Plimpton “The Paris Review” 1958

Jun 15, 20121 note

“[…] I believe in hardening yourself against opinion…And in this connection there is one piece of advice I strongly urge: Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.” —Truman Capote “The Paris Review”

Jun 14, 2012

“At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination. If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can’t forget it — it will haunt you till it’s written.” —Truman Capote “The Paris Review”

Jun 13, 2012

“Well, I can’t imagine anything more encouraging than having someone buy your work. I never write — indeed, am physically incapable of writing — anything that I don’t think will be paid for.” —Truman Capote “The Paris Review”

Jun 12, 2012

“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence — no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I change seven.” —Dorothy Parker “The Paris Review”

Jun 11, 2012

“If you don’t have a sense of humor, you don’t have a marriage. In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other. You make a mistake. I forgot the lightbulbs. I didn’t bring this from the store and I’m sorry. You know? So being able to accept responsibility, but above all having a sense of humor, so that anything that happens can have its amusing side.” —Ray Bradbury “The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 203”

Jun 9, 2012

“I used to study Eudora Welty. She has the remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line. In one line! You must study these things to be a good writer. Welty would have a woman simply come into a room and look around. In one sweep she gave you the feel of the room, the sense of the woman’s character, and the action itself. All in twenty words. And you say, How’d she do that? What adjective? What verb? What noun? How did she select them and put them together? I was an intense student. Sometimes I’d get an old copy of Wolfe and cut out paragraphs and paste them in my story, because I couldn’t do it, you see. I was so frustrated! And then I’d retype whole sections of other people’s novels just to see how it felt coming out. Learn their rhythm.” —Ray Bradbury “The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 203”

Jun 9, 2012

“[T]he problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours. I try to encourage my student friends and my writer friends to write a short story in one day so it has a skin around it, its own intensity, its own life, its own reason for being. There’s a reason why the idea occurred to you at that hour anyway, so go with that and investigate it, get it down. Two or three thousand words in a few hours is not that hard. Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone.” —Ray Bradbury “The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 203”

Jun 6, 2012

“Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” —Warsan Shire

Jun 4, 201217 notes

“But recognizing that your expectations are proving wrong—accepting that you need a new plan—is commonly the hardest thing to do. We have this problem called confidence. To take a risk, you must have confidence in yourself. In surgery, you learn early how essential that is. You are imperfect. Your knowledge is never complete. The science is never certain. Your skills are never infallible. Yet you must act. You cannot let yourself become paralyzed by fear.” —“Fear and Rescue” Atul Gawande

Jun 4, 2012

“Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate – and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would have definitely been different.” —

“What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” Haruki Murakami

Jun 1, 20122 notes

“Freud said there are no accidents. Or maybe it was Picasso. I think they both said it.” —Tom Drury

Jun 1, 2012

Sketchbook

June 2012

17 posts