M. H. Abrams Quotes

If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

M. H. Abrams

• Writing
• Teaching
• Intellectual

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington – wasn't nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.

  

  Malcolm X
  • History
  • Man
  • Mistake

• All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Writing
  • Storytelling

• I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

  

  Randy Newman
  • Writing
  • Truth
  • Yourself

• Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.

  

  Carlos Fuentes
  • Writing
  • Done
  • Nothing

• I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

  

  Vince Gill
  • Up
  • Good
  • Writing

• Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.

  

  Patrick White
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Man

• My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my childhood.

  

  Rani Mukerji
  • Writing
  • Girl
  • Understanding

• I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

  

  Callie Khouri
  • Writing
  • Women
  • Feel

• One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

  

  Rachel Field
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Friends

• Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.

  

  LaToya Jackson
  • People
  • Time
  • Believe

• When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

  

  Calvin Trillin
  • Writing
  • You
  • Delivery

• 'Seize the Story' takes readers all the way through the process of writing fiction, from beginning to end. Every element, from dialogue to setting, plotting to character creation, is laid out and illustrated with examples. But the tone of the book is not that of a dry writing manual - it's definitely written for teenagers.

  

  Victoria Hanley
  • Writing
  • Character
  • Book

• I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Political

• Writing is agony. I hate it.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Writing
  • Hate
  • Agony

• It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.

  

  Dan Brown
  • People
  • Writing
  • Trying

• Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.

  

  Ed Sheeran
  • Writing
  • Weird
  • Write

• The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

  

  A. B. Yehoshua
  • Writing
  • Beginning
  • Process

• I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research university.

  

  Nancy Roman
  • Teaching
  • Research
  • Tenure

• His writing - in so many languages - made me a sign-post pointing east, west, north and south. I had shoes in German, stockings in French, gloves in Hebrew, a hat with a veil in Italian. He only kept me naked where I was most accustomed to wearing clothes.

  

  Peter Greenaway
  • Writing
  • Shoes
  • German

• Fans are your greatest enemies because they tend to bracket you. And the moment someone expects I should do something, I break out. I often tell fans who say, 'Make a 'Gulal 2' or 'Gangs 3,' that I am living my dream, not theirs.

  

  Anurag Kashyap
  • Dream

• You find yourself in this place where you really get to find out what you're made of, and what I found was that when I was at my time of greatest need, there were people who appeared in my life, and helped me through it.

  

  Kathy Mattea
  • People
  • Life
  • Time

• Seeing death is not as difficult as you might think. What's harder is to see people suffer. It's the people the dead left behind that get to you.

  

  Lara Logan
  • People
  • Think
  • Death

• If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

  

  M. H. Abrams
  • Writing
  • Teaching
  • Intellectual