A Quote by Sefi Atta
What works for me is that I read widely and stay focused on my writing. I'm no longer concerned about what happens in the literary marketplace. It is distracting and can lead to discontent.
Related Quotes
Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.
It is hard to stay focused with so much swirling around me. God is distracting. He never stops talking, and I can never stop listening. There is a reason we sleep.
When you're writing about something that happened, it helps you transition to the present. Ironically enough, by focusing on your presidency, it helps you realize that you're no longer the president. By reliving moments, it helps you stay focused on the moment.
When we talk about books, we rarely talk about the economic side of writing, especially of writing literary works, and that, at base, it's a pretty costly enterprise.
As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.
Complex literary works demand an effort from the reader that is becoming harder to justify, given the sink-or-swim pressures to make profitable products for a global marketplace.
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
When I read students’ attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.
I'm not too concerned what happens to my books after I'm dead. But I am very concerned by what's going on with the culture of reading and writing nowadays.
Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.
It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.
The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.
I write the books I want to read. I'm interested in seeing what happens with this book in the marketplace.
The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.
If you can't stay focused enough to focus on what people out there actually care about, their own lives, their healthcare, their education for their children, businesses that they can build, if you can stay focused enough to put that in your speech, you can't be president.
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