A Quote by Edward Hoagland

A writer's work is to witness things.

Edward Hoagland

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Things Witness Work Writer

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Edward Hoagland
American - Author
Born: December 21, 1932

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.

Sherman Alexie

A writer is not a prophet, is not a philosopher; he's just someone who is witness to what is around him. And so writing is a way to... it's the best way to testify, to be a witness.

J. M. G. Le Clezio

I see people whose spirits are not broken, who continue to work for justice. That makes me feel alive, when I witness their work, and then I witness some of their dreams come to fruition.

Emily Saliers

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Paulo Coelho

I tend to think that the onus is on the writer to engage the reader, that the reader should not be expected to need the writer, that the writer has to prove it. All that stuff might add up to a kind of fun in the work. I like things that are about interesting subjects, which sounds self-evident.

Lorin Stein

Just one quality of the Buddha has to be remembered. He consists only of one quality: witnessing. This small word witnessing contains the whole of spirituality. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are only a witness. As the witnessing deepens, you start becoming drunk with the divine. That is what is called ecstasy.

Rajneesh

Witness the witness itself - and... the ultimate ecstasy is created. Start watching your thoughts but don't stop there... One more thing has to be done, one more step: now watch the watcher... Nothing else is left, only you are. By watching the mind, the mind disappears. By watching the witness, the witness expands and becomes universal.

Rajneesh

Be a witness of sex too. Don't be the controller of it. Don't try to forcibly bring it under control, remain a witness of it too. Just as you are a witness of everything else, remain a witness of sex too.

Rajneesh

A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

Vivian Gornick

The work of art expresses precisely those things which do not die. It must do so, however, in a form that bears witness to the artist's own era.

Constantin Brancusi

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.

Susan Sarandon

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

Raymond Carver

You have to develop that peace of mind within yourself by which you can become the witness of yourself first. You should be able to witness yourself and see what are the things, which are putting you down.

Nirmala Srivastava

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.

Dani Shapiro

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

Ernest Hemingway

Witness state is not a mental state, it is a state of a spiritual ascent where you become a witness. Best way to practice witness state is not to criticize anyone.

Nirmala Srivastava

A Quote by Edward Hoagland

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