A Quote by Arthur Smith

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.

Arthur Smith

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Travel Book Both Entertaining Find Illuminating Indulgence Occasionally Prose Replace Research Self Sloppy Vivid Writing

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Arthur Smith
English - Comedian
Born: November 27, 1954

One book at a time... though I'm usually doing the research for others while I'm writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written - and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive.

Bernard Cornwell

Do you know what the lurid intermixture of complicated emotions produces, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne? That's right, it produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Ryan MacDonald's glorious shards of prose are both lurid and blazing, and together they comprise an anthology of complex feelings-dream-like, vivid, and never, ever obvious.

Chris Bachelder

I find research fascinating and always conduct some before I begin writing, and then fill in the rest as needed. I read stacks of books and also had the opportunity to travel to England to do more research.

Julie Klassen

The first book really was kind of an entertaining textbook for the homemaker. I couldn't find a good book about entertaining in 1982, and neither could my friend, so I decided to write it.

Martha Stewart

The only valid reason to use clichés is in the speech of a character. Cliches are indications of sloppy writing. The writer does not respect the scene he is trying to dramatize enough to fashion it through precise prose and imaginative imagery. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

Leonard Bishop

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

Samuel McChord Crothers

I didn't mind writing incoherently, up until about 1980, occasionally. But after that, I decided, might as well be articulate. And I found, though, that writing poetry affected my prose to the point where I never again wrote in one draft, and my prose just took longer and longer and longer. It took longer and longer to come up with an acceptable text. And that's probably one of the reasons that my output has slowed down.

Richard Meltzer

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

Chuck Klosterman

In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.

Margaret Atwood

When I feel something very intensely or deeply or personally, I can go to extremes of self-expression or self-analysis by writing a poem - more than I can just talking to somebody or writing prose.

Jimmy Carter

Self-indulgence takes many forms. A man may be self-indulgent in speech, in touch, in sight. From self-indulgence a man comes to idle speech and worldly talk, to buffoonery and cracking indecent jokes. There is self-indulgence in touching without necessity, making mocking signs with the hands, pushing for a place, snatching up something for oneself, approaching someone else shamelessly. All these things come from not having the fear of God in the soul and from these a man comes little by little to perfect contempt.

Dorotheus of Gaza

Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.

Jonathan Kellerman

I'm publicizing the book that's done. I'm writing the book that's in the hopper, and I'm doing a little advance research on the book to come.

Ann Rule

Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.

Richard Mitchell

I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence.

Irvine Welsh

Prose is like this big block - you write big paragraphs. I feel that when I'm reading and writing, that a prose book is kind of monolithic. But a song is more like a feather or something.

Bill Callahan

A Quote by Arthur Smith

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