Wednesday, April 24, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Paul Valery

« All quotes from this author
 

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.
--
Letter to writer André Gide. Quoted in Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe, pt. 1, epilogue (1978)

 
Paul Valery

» Paul Valery - all quotes »



Tags: Paul Valery Quotes, Authors starting by V


Similar quotes

 

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy — the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.

 
William Saroyan
 

Of course I'm a black writer.... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

 
Toni Morrison
 

A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

 
Ernest Hemingway
 

Every writer wants to be believed. But every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

 
John le Carre
 

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between “being a writer” and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. “You’ve got to want to write,” I say to them, “not want to be a writer.”
The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

 
Alex Haley
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact