A Quote by Adam Gopnik
In an age of malice and bad faith on many sides, I reread White or Thurber or Mitchell and am reminded again that good writing is done, as I said in my elegy for Salinger, with an active eye and ear and an ardent heart, and in no other way.
Related Quotes
Salinger is such a terrific writer; he did so many great things. He is one of those writers that I still reread, simply because he makes me see the possibilities and makes me feel like writing. There are certain writers who put you in the mood to write. In the way a whiff of a cigar will bring back memories of a ballgame on a Saturday afternoon, reading Salinger makes me want to get to the typewriter.
A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'
I had some bad jobs when I was young. Writing is not one of them. If you're fortunate enough to reach my age, to still be writing, you have to be grateful, and I am. I've been lucky. For many years, all I've done is writing, and it's all I've ever wanted to do.
The ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can perceive only what is presented to it.
That cactus went right through my eye. It left my eye flat. They took me to a doctor, and he said, 'We'll have to take the eye out.' ...I fought like a tiger. I said, 'No! Leave the eye alone. I am sure it will grow back.' The doctor said, 'You're too young to know.' ...But in a year's time that fluid came back, and that eye is just as good as the other one today.
For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!' I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. I liked white better,' I said. White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.' In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.' - Gandalf
With old inflation riding the headlines, I have read till I am bleary-eyed, and I can't get head from tails of the whole thing. ... Now we are living in an age of explanations-and plenty of 'em, too-but no two things that's been done to us have been explained twice the same way, by even the same man. It's and age of in one ear and out the other.
Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.
Needed are...[souls] filled with compassion, that we might communicate not only eye to eye, or voice to ear, but in the majestic style of the Savior, even heart to heart.
O, this faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing! It is impossible that it should not be ceaselessly doing that which is good. It does not even ask whether good works should be done; but before the question can be asked, it has done them, and it is constantly engaged in doing them. But he who does not do such works, is a man without faith. He gropes and casts about him to find faith and good works, not knowing what either of them is, and yet prattles and idly multiplies words about faith and good works.
When Robert Bly visited Interlochen Center for the Arts so many years ago, he spoke to the creative writing majors and said, "The eye reports to the brain, but the ear reports to the heart." Perhaps this is the thing that musicians can do that writers can't ever, quite, but it is what I aspire to, that sense/power of the auditory, and the belief that to hear more clearly is to see more clearly, and that to see more clearly is to feel more deeply.
Something that we call developing the third eye in others. The eye is that people have intention when they're interacting, and often don't realize that there is an impact for everything that they do. The littlest thing, from scratching their head back here. This is, universally, "I don't understand what you said." That's what the scratch behind the ear means. If we know that, it's a whole other level. I could go back and say, "Let me do this again, because I'm seeing that it's not fully registering." We should be teaching these to people, is what I'm saying.
What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
D.H. Lawrence, I think, defined the difference between writing an article and writing a novel very well. He said, in writing a novel, the writer must be able to identify emotionally and intellectually with two or three or four contradicting perspectives and give each of them very a convincing voice. It's like playing tennis with yourself and you have to be on both sides of the yard. You have to be on both sides, or all sides if there are more than two sides.
When I am so intensely involved with writing my books, I don't like to reread them. I feel like that story is done.
The way the show was conceived originally and developed, has always had good writing at the heart of it, it's very difficult to be good with bad writing. 'New Tricks' has that with the right level of humor running through the series, along with the investigations.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer