Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

Boxing is all about how cool and controlled and clear your mind is. Violence only gets in the way of you winning a fight. It's a sport that's more about the strategy than anything. You lose or you win in your head.

The F-word here is focus.

Being patient has made me a more precise fighter.

If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.

I thought the message of the artist was more important than the writing style. I tried to be clear; I wanted everyone to be welcome. I think some of the more serious writers wrote to a more elite audience than that. They're the ones who were defining the seriousness of rock n' roll.

Golf is day-to-day. It's shot to shot; it's not four days at a time.

For me, the enemy is procrastination, and losing attention, you know? It's not the writing that's difficult, it's sitting down to write - if that makes any sense. I feel I can write pretty well, and I can write pretty effectively.

Sometimes I'll be writing something, and I say to myself, 'Okay, that's definitely DTB,' or, 'It's definitely Strapping.'

I read 'The Young Landlords' and felt almost a chemical change. What I realized while reading that book was that I could write in my voice, use my tongue, my language, my style, and write a story.

People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.

I can let go of a lot of stuff, but I focus on things I think I should, like dancing, because it takes 100 percent concentration on every step.

I'm too professional, too much of a perfectionist to take my eye off the ball.

I write in cafes, never at home. I cannot focus at home, am forever getting off my chair to do other things. In a cafe, I have to sit still, or I'll look a bit unhinged.

The musical training taught me to focus my mind, before playing in an orchestra taught me how to truly concentrate. If you miss your moment in an orchestra, there is no forgiving.

Even if we don't play fantastically, with good passing and precision and finesse, the most important thing is to win.

Nothing is more important to me than the work itself. If I feel I am getting swayed too much, I take a step back… My focus is also on the performance.

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

Whatever you are doing, put your whole mind on it. If you are shooting, your mind should be only on the target. Then you will never miss. If you are learning your lessons, think only of the lesson. In India boys and girls are taught to do this.

This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.

As a prose writer, I work with language; and those who work with language turn to poetry for renewal.

Decide for yourself what kind of works you want to create... facts, essays, poems - do you want to speak or to sing?

I don't know anything but writing practice, and so what I really do is direct that energy as if it were flowing down a river.

There is such an animal as a nonstylist, only they're not writers - they're typists.