“So I kept pulling my punches. And later I realised that was a mistake. Life doesn’t spare the kind of people who I write about, so I felt like it would be dishonest to spare my characters in that way.”

— Jesmyn Ward

Source: On how she “protected” her characters in her first novel Where the Line Bleeds in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘Black girls are silenced, misunderstood and underestimated'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/11/jesmyn-ward-home-mississippi-living-with-addiction-poverty-racism in The Guardian (2018 May 11)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 11, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "So I kept pulling my punches. And later I realised that was a mistake. Life doesn’t spare the kind of people who I writ…" by Jesmyn Ward?

Jesmyn Ward 4

American writer 1977

Related quotes

“He had a nice smile. Seeing it, I felt like I’d won a prize, because he was so sparing with them.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“As a writer, my primary responsibility to readers is to write a story that is entertaining, and authentic. I wanted to write about characters who felt true to life, while also providing a way for readers to laugh at the foibles of others. Some of my characters are foolish, some are wise and kind, others are shallow and misguided. That’s how regular people behave too, and in fact we all cycle between many different ways of being…”

Uzma Jalaluddin (1980)

On writing characters in “Interviews with authors at EMWF: Uzma Jalaluddin” https://theontarion.com/2018/09/13/interviews-with-authors-at-emwf-uzma-jalaluddin/ in The Ontarion (2018 Sep 13)

“The way I would live my life is: never do something in real life that I would not want to write about in my Autobiography.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 43
Dark Rooms (2002)

“I trust that I am honest with myself. I know that I am not very sociable and I expect to go on being so; a man capable of creative work has no time to spare for fools who would like to visit.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXVI : The Keys to the City, p. 249

“Given my tendency to err so on the sentimental side,
I'll spare you my goodbyes:
The truth belongs to God,
The mistakes were mine.”

Aaron Weiss

In a Market Dimly Lit.
Brother, Sister (2006)

“I have only [written the Water Margin] to fill up my spare time, and give pleasure to myself; […] I have written it so that the uneducated can read it as well as the educated […]. Alas! Life is so short that I shall not even know what the reader thinks about it, but still I shall be satisfied if a few of my friends will read it and be interested. Also I do not know what I may think of it in my future life after death, because then I may not able to even read it. So why think anything further about it?”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Pearl S. Buck: "Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?" (All Men are Brothers, 1933; p. xiii)
Preface to Water Margin

“A big, studly football jock like me? I got plenty of blood to spare. For you, I have anything to spare.”

Kristin Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

“The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "Reality bites" by Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,784535,00.html (2 September 2002)

“I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“So I kept pulling my punches. And later I realised that was a mistake. Life doesn’t spare the kind of people who I write about, so I felt like it would be dishonest to spare my characters in that way.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jesmyn Ward 4

Related quotes

Related topics