Alan Sillitoe Quotes
The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.
Quotes to Explore
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I don't really like to explain my songs.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking.
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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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I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
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One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.
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I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
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Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
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I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.
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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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The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.
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If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.
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Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
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I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
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You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.
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Writing is a form of licensed madness.
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Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments.
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Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.
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As the lawyer, I found most of it was a matter of research, which I was great at - that's what I did to death - and then basically persuading people that you're right, and they're wrong... I found that the easiest of all the professions to impersonate.
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We will, as Americans, inhale another culture on a fork before we try their music or their art or even, God forbid, hang out with the actual people.
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I just wasn't academic. I wanted to be in the real world.
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Well, I mean, you have an emotion, you want to express it. You don't just look in the camera and do it. You want to hide from the embarrassment of your brother saying you're not allowed to come into my town.
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The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.
