Quote collection
37 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I knew Anais Nin, who called me after I had been away for a few years. She was seeking help because at that time no one would give her a decent review. She was made fun of."
"Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him."
"There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know."
"I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about."
"I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer."
"The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write."
"I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing."
"All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning."
"I think most people dont like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly dont want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me."
"When you have examined all the illusions of life and know that there isn't any reality, but you nevertheless go on, then you are a mature human being. You accept the idea that it is all mask and illusion and that people are in disguise. You see the crumbl"
"I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there."
"I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career."
"When the dream came into being, I always pursued it."
"Is it experimental to have been influenced by the Bible? By Saint Augustine?"
"At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age."
"I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons."
"we live our fate before we realize exactly what it is."