Johnny Flynn Quotes

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.

A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone's writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

There is the intent of the writer and the interpretation by the artist. What the writer intended and what the artist interprets is not a 1-to-1 translation. It's a crossing of ideas that generates the stories that you see in print.

A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

I wouldn't be very happy if a poet read what I had written and said, 'What a peculiar thing to say about this work of mine.'

I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.

I was an English major, so I love discussing possibilities and alternate theories.

We're writing a book together. She just finished one. Did you read it? Among the Porcupines?

I often reread books I have written.

I rewrote the ending to 'Farewell to Arms,' the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Translated poetry filled the no-man's-land between my own work and other writers', and I found this fascinating to explore.

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other.

It's a great luxury to have the writer with you on a new play because you can write and re-write, just trying to get the arc of the story, of their relationship right.

Cross-pollination and 'contamination' is really important to the health of fiction, and sometimes it's a literal conversation, too, in that writers who might never otherwise meet and talk do so because of our anthologies.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.

I can appreciate other writers' works.

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

I did a lot of studying of great writers. I read that Hemingway rewrote 'The Sun Also Rises' 39 times.

I love English and literature.

My friend Akshay Upadhyay and I used to write poetry and read out to each other.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it. And then, there are notes and you change it, in the conventional studio system.

This Is Not a Novel memorializes the treasures and detritus of one man's singularly cultured mind. (...) If you don't know Writer's work at all, try This Is Not a Novel. There may be some doubt about exactly what kind of book it is, but not that it's altogether wonderful.

Writers will be judged by what they write.

I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.