“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
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Vladimir Nabokov193
Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor 1899–1977Related quotes
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
Stephen King (1947) American author
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)
As quoted in The Star (1959) and Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1982) by Jonathon Green.
“I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense.”
Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer
On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: My English teacher from 1955, run to ground by some documentary crew trying to explain my life, said that in her class I had showed no particular promise. This was true. Until the descent of the giant thumb, I showed no particular promise. I also showed no particular promise for some time afterwards, but I did not know this. A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. If I had not been ignorant in this particular way, I would not have announced to an assortment of my high school female friends, in the cafeteria one brown-bag lunchtime, that I was going to be a writer. I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense. But my announcement was certainly a conversation-stopper. Sticks of celery were suspended in mid-crunch, peanut-butter sandwiches paused halfway between table and mouth; nobody said a word. One of those present reminded me of this incident recently — I had repressed it — and said she had been simply astounded. "Why?," I said. "Because I wanted to be a writer?" "No," she said. "Because you had the guts to say it out loud."
Hayden White (1928–2018) American historian
"The fictions of factual representation"
William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director
"William Shtner on Sci-Fi, Aging and the Environment" http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/08/22/in-the-magazine/shatner.html as interviewed by Jeanne Wolf, Saturday Evening Post, September/October 2017
George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher
The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.
“In Woodstock Nation there are no writers—only poet-warriors.”
Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation
Landing a Man on the Earth Without the Help of Norman Mailer
Woodstock Nation (1969)
“The travel writer seeks the world we have lost — the lost valleys of the imagination.”
Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer
"Bwana Vistas," Harper’s (August 1985), reprinted in Corruptions of Empire (1988).