“Pay attention. As a summation of all that I have had to say as a writer, I would settle for that. And as a talisman or motto for that journey in search of a homeland, which is what faith is, I would settle for that too.”
Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006)
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Frederick Buechner 67
Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian 1926Related quotes

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.


“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

“Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme.
Context: p>Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.
Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but
Make it to see the clearer, and who shut
Its passages from hatred, avarice,
Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice.
Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.
And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,
Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.The holy sacred Word,
May it always afford
T' us all in common,
Both man and woman,
A spiritual shield and sword,
The holy sacred Word.</p

On how she processed literature differently at an early age in “Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers” https://www.npr.org/2016/10/14/497953254/jacqueline-woodson-on-growing-up-coming-out-and-saying-hi-to-strangers in NPR (2016 Oct 14)

“I write exactly as I speak, so therefore I would not say any writer influenced me at all.”
When asked about her influences. guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/10/maevebinchy

“I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.”
Source: The Year of Magical Thinking