
Miloš Urošević, as quoted in May '92 (2012) p.19
About
Hemingway's famous iceberg theory of writing.
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
Miloš Urošević, as quoted in May '92 (2012) p.19
About
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.