James Fenton Quotes
In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.
Quotes to Explore
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I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
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I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.
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Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.
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I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'
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I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.
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Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
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Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.
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Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
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For me a day without training is like a day without eating.
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I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.
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My whole thing is to entertain, make people laugh and to forget about the real world for awhile.
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I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.
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My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.
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I think it's really good to get the adrenaline pumping.
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There are no rules to writing a song.
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Public-Private Partnership in financing, service delivery and provision of workspaces and training of trainers must be promoted to meet the demand and supply gap in the field of skill development.
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Writing is agony. I hate it.
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Arendt did have a certain snobbishness, though in some of her writing she expressed more democratic attitudes.
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Nothing can replace the excitement, the magic and yes the glamour of a Ziegfeld show. To see the great showman sitting in the second row busily writing his telegrams is a thrill no actress can forget.
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It's cool to play a sinister bad guy who also has a human side.
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I wanted to be Samson or Hercules from the age of six.
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He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
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Society isn't good at dealing with people who have something concrete to feel guilty about or who are dealing with a loss.
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In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.
