“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.”

Source: The Word and the Bomb

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising." by Hanif Kureishi?
Hanif Kureishi photo
Hanif Kureishi 23
English playwright, screenwriter, novelist 1954

Related quotes

Gabriel García Márquez photo
Nelson Algren photo

“The less he sees of other writers the more of a writer he will ultimately become. When he sees scarcely anyone except other writers, he is ready for New York.”

Nonconformity (1953/1996)
Context: The American middle class's faith in personal comfort as an end in itself is, in essence, a denial of life. And it has been imposed upon American writers and playwrights strongly enough to cut them off from their deeper sources. The shortcut to comfort is called “specialization,” and in an eye-ear-nose-and-throat doctor this makes sense. But in a writer it is fatal. The less he sees of other writers the more of a writer he will ultimately become. When he sees scarcely anyone except other writers, he is ready for New York.

Avril Lavigne photo
Michael Cunningham photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“Sometimes when we make these distinctions, we’re really creating them more than describing anything that’s already there.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 48 (p. 488)

Willa Cather photo
Joseph Joubert photo
John Cheever photo

Related topics