Janet Malcolm Quotes
As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
Quotes to Explore
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The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.
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I'm guilty of it myself, sort of thinking, 'Classic novels: snoozeville.' But there is a huge amount of wonderful material.
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Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
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I try to choose the projects that I think are the most well-written and well-executed, and the rest of it is so beyond my control to be almost not worth thinking about at all.
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When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
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One reason the United States is one of three countries in the world that do not have any form of paid maternity leave is that many American business leaders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose any family-friendly policies. They scare people into thinking maternity leave will be a job killer.
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When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.
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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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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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I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.
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You need people around you that care about you and are thinking about you in your best interest. And keep your mind straight.
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We took a plant that was being closed by a big company thinking there was no good use for it, and we came in with a different perspective. We bought some used equipment, as simple as we could.
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For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.
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Writing can be a very solitary profession, and when deadlines are looming, it's tempting to glue myself to my desk, but I try to make sure I get out a few times a month with friends just so I don't forget what it means to be social.
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For hundreds of years Iranians have been migrating to many parts of the world. They took Islamic culture to other parts of the world and established it there.
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My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!
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I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.
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I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.
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College applications are such a huge part of senior year, yet often times you never see characters in books actually do work.
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The emotions will take care of themselves. You don't have to prod them along. As a matter of fact, you get in trouble when you prod them along.
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The World Wide Web was precisely what we were trying to PREVENT- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.
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As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
