Teodor Burnar quote: “The silence of a great writer says more than the writing of the greatest dilettante.”

“I always say that I’m a writer who writes more from place than race.”

Katori Hall (1981) American playwright

On the theme that she most explores in “Art Talk with Playwright Katori Hall” https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2015/art-talk-playwright-katori-hall (National Endowment of the Arts; 2015 May 28)

“Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.

“And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Source: Essays of Three Decades (1942)

“I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.”

Julia Stiles (1981) American actress

Daily News, April 12, 1999.

“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Letter to Shirley Wiley (30 March 1954), in The Letters of E. B. White (1989), p. 391

“It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 525
Context: It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.

“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“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.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

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.

“They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.”

John O'Hara (1905–1970) American journalist

“The silence of a great writer says more than the writing of the greatest dilettante.”

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