“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic
“Writing fiction is … an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”
Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.
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Rose Wilder Lane43
American journalist 1886–1968Related quotes
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: Science Fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
Morgan Parker (writer) American poet
On her poetry not existing in a vacuum in “You Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/22/you-are-on-display-an-interview-with-morgan-parker/ in The Paris Review (2016 Jul 22)
“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”
Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1902–1952) Spanish dramatist
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
As quoted in Honor Your Gifts (2007) by Dona M. Deane, p. 199.
Variant: But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 93
“Some writings could sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
A statement of 1968, as quoted in "How And Why I Write: An Interview with Elie Wiesel" by Heidi Anne Walker, in Journal of Education, Vol. 162 (1980), p. 57
Variants:
Some words are deeds.
Souls on Fire : Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1982)
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
As quoted in "Nobelists, Auschwitz, and Survival" by Robert McAfee Brown, in Christianity and Crisis, Vol. 48 (7 March 1988), p. 58
“life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.”
David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest
Source: Infinite Jest