"Writers are like eremites or anchorites - natural-born eremites or anchorites - who seem puzzled as to why they went up the pole or into the cave in the first place."
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Quote collection
Joy Williams quotes (page 2 of 2)
33 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A writer starts out, I think, wanting to be a transfiguring agent, and ends up usually just making contact, contact with other human beings. This, unsurprisingly, is not enough."
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"As you grow older, you'll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends."
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"Writers end up writing stories-or rather, stories' shadows-and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough"
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"Many writers today are wanderers. There is not only an unhousedness in language - how to convey, to say nothing of converge - but an unhousedness of place."
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"Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face."
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"I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste."
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"Nothing the writer can do is ever enough."
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"Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits."
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"One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies."
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"A side benefit of the new and developing technologies is that soon we won't have to feel guilty about the suffering and denigration of the animals because we will have made them up."
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"Did the walls of the barn start to tremble With a glory they could not contain? Did anyone wake with the feeling Of peace that they could not explain? Oh the love must have been overwhelming As it warmed everyone in it's flow For all of the earth is still telling of 2000 Decembers ago."
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"I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. If you don't do anything with it, you lose it."
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