E. M. Forster Quotes

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

A lot of the time, I read something I've written, and I think, 'Well, that's competent. It's not exactly breaking any boundaries. It's not exactly transgressive. It's just a bunch of fake people in a room talking to each other. But maybe there's a value to that.'

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

The freedom of every artist is essential.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I simply love writing good stories; that's my passion.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

I don't want to steal anybody's story. I very much want to use the stories that I hear to get lost in my mind, to tell a larger story.

I wanted always to be a storyteller of the fullest expression.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.

Gutzon Borglum, the individual, is nothing. Art, expression, freedom are everything. On this I stand or fall.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

I think everybody is allowed, especially when they're telling a story, as long as it's not based on somebody's real life, you're allowed a certain liberty.

I don't have anything to prove as a writer anymore. I write about Panera Bread or Red Lobster or Satan or Richard Ramirez or whatever comes to mind. I just write.

Le mensonge et les vers de tout temps sont amis. Lies and literature have always been friends.

I can do my part of the storytelling. I can carry it. I can paint it. I can maneuver it. I can massage it. But if I don't have anything to work with, then there's nothing.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.

The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called 'real world' of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets.