Anthony Hamilton Quotes

As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.

Language for me narrates the pictures in my mind.

When you write, it's just a much more crystalline, compressed version of the voice you think with - though not the one you speak with. I think your writing voice is your laser-guided missile. It's the poetry part of you.

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundred American writers, many well-regarded, who appear to believe that one word is just as good as another and that everything which occurs to them is worth putting down.

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

How hard it is to make your thoughts look anything but imbecile fools when you paint them with ink on paper.

I write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

I write a lot in my head. I've never been driven to write things down.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

I write what I write.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.

Writing is not like acting, where you can pull these little stunts that create a particular effect. Words are all it is about, and the way you use words has to be individual and particular to you.

I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

When I write, I see the pages in my head, not the words.

I write from the voice in my head.

I'm the kind of writer who thinks style is just as important as the story being told.

I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can't do it.

To me, writing is a matter of voice. I think like that. The expression I sometimes use to myself is 'actual song.' That what I do is somewhere on the line between speaking to you as I am now and actual song. And the things I love when I say one of those poems to myself - it's a little bit like singing, it's a little bit like speaking.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.