Miloš Urošević, as quoted in May '92 (2012) p.19
About
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things only because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”
Hemingway's famous iceberg theory of writing.
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961Related quotes
Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 11
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Context: I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.
“A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.”
Source: Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh and Other Stories
Source: On a writer’s responsibility in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)
"Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935) [p. 8]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.”
Radio interview (1939) quoted in Introduction by Robert DeMott to a 1992 edition of The Grapes of Wrath
Context: Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor … And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.