“I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by.”
Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.
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A.R. Ammons 17
American poet 1926–2001Related quotes
Opinion about music http://www.hindustantimes.com/music/i-don-t-sing-for-money-or-fame-shreya-ghoshal/story-8vgJ5F1u77DfpVBcTF8R2J.html - Archived http://web.archive.org/web/20170307222836/http://www.hindustantimes.com/music/i-don-t-sing-for-money-or-fame-shreya-ghoshal/story-8vgJ5F1u77DfpVBcTF8R2J.html
Source: Disclaimer (2013) http://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/about/disclaimer-2/
“When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!”
Letter to Proctor (January 22, 1829), in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject (2000), p. 526
Entry (1981)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: In all my life I never competed for fortune, for a woman, or for fame. I learned to write in total isolation. My first work was also my best, and the first thing published. I never belonged to a circle or clique. I did not know I was writing a book until it was written. When my first book was published there was no one near me, an acquaintance let alone a friend, to congratulate me. I have never savored triumph, never won a race.
“I feel as if it were time for me to write to someone who will believe what I write.”
Letter to his brother Rev. William N. Cleveland (7 November 1882); published in The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland (1892), p. 534.
Context: I feel as if it were time for me to write to someone who will believe what I write.
I have been for some time in the atmosphere of certain success, so that I have been sure that I should assume the duties of the high office for which I have been named. I have tried hard, in the light of this fact, to appreciate properly the responsibilities that will rest upon me, and they are much, too much underestimated. But the thought that has troubled me is, can I well perform my duties, and in such a manner as to do some good to the people of the State? I know there is room for it, and I know that I am honest and sincere in my desire to do well; but the question is whether I know enough to accomplish what I desire.
The social life which seems to await me has also been a subject of much anxious thought. I have a notion that I can regulate that very much as I desire; and, if I can, I shall spend very little time in the purely ornamental part of the office. In point of fact, I will tell you, first of all others, the policy I intend to adopt, and that is, to make the matter a business engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an eye single to the interest of my employers. I shall have no idea of re-election, or any higher political preferment in my head, but be very thankful and happy I can serve one term as the people's Governor.
Interview in The Baton Rouge Advocate (1980), as quoted in "J.D. Salinger, author of 'Catcher in the Rye,' dies" in The Washington Post (28 January 2010) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012803177.html
Phases in English Poetry (1928)
