A Quote by Russell Freedman

Anyone writing a picture-book biography of Lincoln has a different set of responsibilities from someone writing a biography for sixth-graders, say, or from a Lincoln scholar writing an academic book on Lincoln. Each of these writers has a different audience and different goals. That's obvious.

Russell Freedman

Quote Topics

Academic Anyone Audience Biography Book Different Each Goals Lincoln Obvious Picture Responsibilities Say Scholar Set Sixth Someone Writers Writing

Quote Author

Russell Freedman
American - Author
Born: October 11, 1929

Until the early 90s, when I was working on a project about the idea of free will in American philosophy. I knew that Lincoln had had something to say about "necessity" and "fatalism," and so I began writing him into the book. In fact, Lincoln took over. I wrote instead 'Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President,' in 1999, and I've splitting rails with Mr. Lincoln ever since. If there's a twelve-step process for this somewhere, I haven't found it yet.

Allen C. Guelzo

I suppose I've been interested in Abraham Lincoln for almost as long as I can remember. My first Lincoln book was the Classics Illustrated comic book version of the life of Lincoln, and with that, I was hooked.

Allen C. Guelzo

The best one-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln is still Benjamin Thomas's 1952 biography. David Donald's 1995 biography is a close second, and close enough that if you can only obtain the Donald rather than the Thomas, your book club will still be doing just fine.

Allen C. Guelzo

After I published a book called Lincoln's Virtues a wit said that my next book should be Lincoln's Vices. But in my opinion that would be a short book!

William Lee Miller

The challenges of writing a book are very different from writing a blog or tweets. I've been writing a blog since I was in the 6th grade, so I had this style of writing that was definitely not proper for writing a book.

iJustine

If someone's going to publish a book about addiction, it has to say something new and different. It has to be something we haven't read before. A lot of these books are published because the writing is wonderful. The Frey book has superb writing, and that can be enough to sell a book.

Charles Adams

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

Alan Lightman

It is very hard to answer the oft-posed questions about how Abraham Lincoln would respond to some current condition. My favorite story on that count is that the late great Lincoln scholar Don Fehrebacher was asked, during the struggles over bussing for racial balance a few years ago, what Lincoln would say about "bussing" and he thought awhile and then answered : "what Lincoln would say would be: "What's a bus?"

William Lee Miller

The process for writing a picture book is completely different from the process of writing a chapter book or novel. For one thing, most of my picture books rhyme. Also, when I write a picture book I'm always thinking about the role the pictures will play in the telling of the story. It can take me several months to write a picture book, but it takes me several years to write a novel.

Sarah Weeks

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

Nicholas Meyer

I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

Joyce Carol Oates

I would say one thing writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] did for me was underscore the fact that this issue [all men are created equal] has never been properly addressed and it hasn't gone away.

George Saunders

Writing history and biography for kids calls for special skills that can only be acquired through practice and that are different from those required for an adult audience.

Russell Freedman

People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.

George Saunders

While writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], [idea of inclusion] occurred to me, you either believe in the Constitution or you don't. If you do, it's intense in what it wants of us.

George Saunders

Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

Mindy Kaling

A Quote by Russell Freedman

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors