A Quote by John Paul Caponigro

We don't have enough words for photography. Can you imagine writers having only one word for writing? — © John Paul Caponigro
We don't have enough words for photography. Can you imagine writers having only one word for writing?
Writing well isn't just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in, of having seen something large and having found the right words to say it small, small enough to enter an individual mind so that the strong ideas of what the words are saying sound like sweet reason.
I don't think there is a need of the categorization 'woman writing'. I think in some sense writers lost their gender when they walk into the world of words; I believe that writers ought to be able to slip under the skins of both men and women. Only then will the writing and the characters have credibility and strength.
The idea of political content is irrelevant. Content is irrelevant. I always tell my students, "Never forget you're writing words! You know, word one, word two, word three, word four. The words have to be organized. Nothing else does."
Photography and writing are marvelous distractions from painting. I might even have found movies more interesting than photography. I tried it a bit, but not enough.
When the simple word processors came in, writing became crisper, less dense - just because of the way we could instantly edit on the screen. Now the ability to mash up words and pictures and links and songs and tweets is what matters. I can't imagine what writing will be like in 2154.
It's a hard thing to examine and difficult to speak for other writers, but when I look at my own writing there is often too much reticence. And that's a flaw I have as a person as well. I'm too reticent. I'm non-confrontational to a fault. And I'm risk-averse, which probably shows in my sentences. The aversion to long lines, the tendency to strip things back and be spare. My writing is an act of erasure that's tied up with my personality. I can easily produce a ninety thousand word chunk of writing and then cut back and back until I've only got ten thousand words. Or nothing.
Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.
I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.
I think all writers are mainly writing for themselves because I believe that most writers are writing based on a need to write. But at the same time, I feel that writers are, of course, writing for their readers, too.
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
It was an incredible way to grow up, because words that you're taught - these definite things - you realize they sort of beautifully fall apart; that words are tenuous. In the middle of a large word, there's a small word that possibly contradicts the larger word. So I grew up where, on the one hand, the only thing I would ever think of doing was something in writing, music, or art, and on the other hand, I could've reacted strongly against it because it would've been a way to rebel.
I can't imagine us saying these things to each other out loud. But even if I can't imagine hearing these words, I can imagine living them. I don't even picture it. Instead I'm in it. How I would feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words.
To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot, to look up word origins, to analyze closely the work of writers you admire, to read not only contemporaries but writers of the past, to learn at least one foreign language, to live an interesting life outside of writing.
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.
What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.
I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go.
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