“Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world." by Annie Dillard?
Annie Dillard photo
Annie Dillard 63
American writer 1945

Related quotes

James A. Michener photo

“The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

Ted Hughes photo

“Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.

Cormac McCarthy photo
Grant Morrison photo

“Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Roddy Doyle photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Interview in The Paris Review, Issue #13 http://books.google.com/books?id=iZt6sBaHemQC&q="all+those+writers+who+write+about+their+childhood+gentle+god+if+i+wrote+about+mine+you+wouldn't+sit+in+the+same+room+with+me"&pg=PA8#v=onepage (Summer 1956)

John Doe photo
Natalie Goldberg photo

“Writers move with grace in and out of many worlds.”

Essay, "Writers have good figures". p.56
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Related topics