Gloria Naylor Quotes

The connective tissue between storytelling, advice, and comedy is passion.

I keep saying to everyone that one day I'll write a love song.

Rage is to writers what water is to fish.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

There's not much you can do about time - it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don't tell me that. I'm not proud of it, but I don't have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn't feel passion? It'd be like a chef without an appetite.

Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

You have to have passion for a subject to write about it. You can't expect your readers to feel any excitement if it's nothing but a boring writing exercise for you.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

We must be able to inspire. That's my goal in acting.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

What we play is life.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

The greatest music is made for love, not for money.

You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.

If I ever stopped being angry, I couldn't write anymore. How could I?