A Quote by John McPhee

Writing is a suspension of life in order to re-create life

John McPhee

Quote Topics

Create Life Order Suspension Writing

Quote Author

John McPhee
American - Writer
Born: March 8, 1931

The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.

Octavia E. Butler

Writing objects to the lie that life is small. Writing is a cell of energy. Writing defines itself. Writing draws its viewer in for longer than an instant. Writing exhibits boldness. Writing restores power to exalt, unnerve, shock, and transform us. Writing does not imitate life, it anticipates life.

Jeanette Winterson

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

Sarah Ruhl

To break through language in order to touch life is to create or re-create the theater.

Antonin Artaud

The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

Victor Hugo

To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer... that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.

Elliott Yamin

To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer...that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.

Elliott Yamin

People keep coming up to me and asking, 'How does it feel to be banned for life?' Banned for life. I wasn't banned for life. There was never a word of suspension, probation or ban in that agreement. It was never meant to be part of it.

George Steinbrenner

But in practice master plans fail - because they create totalitarian order, not organic order. They are too rigid; they cannot easily adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community.

Christopher Alexander

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.

James Salter

what a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life.

Nadine Gordimer

I don't just write a script, and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.

Marc Laidlaw

I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.

Miriam Toews

We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.

Timothy Keller

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage, but to bring more love and truth into the world. We marry to assist each other in this task. The most selfish and hateful life of all is that of two beings who unite in order to enjoy life. The highest calling is that of the man who has dedicated his life to serving God and doing good, and who unites with a woman in order to further that purpose.

Leo Tolstoy

A Quote by John McPhee

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors