Michel de Montaigne Quotes

I don't discuss my own beliefs in public, but I will say the beliefs I've given my characters do not necessarily represent what I myself believe.

Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.

I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

I really believe that there is an enormous appetite amongst readers for an originality of vision. In other words, be true to your own dreams and there will always be people who want to hear them.

We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.

If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

We're all standing on the shoulders of what other people have done. But you're supposed to take that and add your own sauce. It can be intimidating, believe me.

If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

I might tell a story about somebody else, but I don't sit there and do a story about somebody snitching on me selling coke because people know I didn't sell coke. So I just try to keep it real but still try to do it in a creative way.

Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time.

All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original; he can only believe it on the report of others.

You know, writer can write about the Foreign Legion without ever having been in the Foreign Legion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what he's written doesn't necessarily reflect the nature of him as an individual - or her. Using the male gender because it's me speaking. I don't mean to put down the female.

I'm a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.

An Edward Povey hangs in my living room and every day I am reminded of his originality, his beauty, and the eternal promise of his craft.

Well you can't believe everything you read. After all, by definition, fiction writers lie for a living.

Novelty is an essential attribute of the beautiful.

O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.

I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.

Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.