A Quote by Tom Wolfe
If most writers are honest with themselves, this is the difference they want to make: before, they were not noticed; now they are.
Related Quotes
To be honest, women just make us smarter. They make us better. I've noticed that in my workplace. I've noticed that at home. I've noticed that in my past experiences in life.
Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?
In my life, I have learned that most people want the same thing. They are not driven by class resentment. What they want most is to make a better life for themselves and their families - and to know that the opportunities for their children will be better than they were for themselves.
People always talk about what they do the night before, but to be totally honest what you do the night before isn't going to make a huge difference in how you look. Maybe eating a giant burger and being bloated would make a difference, but other than that it's the lead-up. For me it's always about trying to consistently maintain a fit and body-conscious eating schedule so three days before I'm not like, Oh my God, I have a bathing suit shoot I have to do.
If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexion, and their faces to become as fiery and as leaden as they make them with the red and the paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the most wretched creatures on earth.
Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.
Men must be honest with themselves before they can be honest with others. A man who is not honest with himself presents a hopeless case.
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.
In the '50s, '60s, '70s, before television became easily accessible, even the most well-known writers were not recognised. The writers remained mostly an anonymous lot then.
In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. It doesn't make any difference if, like me, you couldn't even speak English until you were in your twenties.
We cheated, you and me, and someone noticed. I noticed you; someone else noticed me. It hurts us. That's not so bad. So many people cheat. Everywhere on every level. Everyone's cheated. I'm just saying that you don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated. There's a difference, and you should try to get that difference, or that's who you'll grow up to be.
Why are you uncomfortable with the supernaturalist worldview of the biblical writers? Evangelicals don't want to just say, "Well, the inspired writers were wrong about some of their beliefs about the spiritual world and its inhabitants." That really doesn't work in a confessional situation! So instead we come up with excuses and interpretations that allow us to remake the biblical writers in our own post-Enlightenment image. I understand that impulse, but it's not honest.
Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
If you are ending up where you want to be, what difference does it make whether you went fast or slow? Or what difference does it make whether it was painful before it got really good? Isn't that the point of free will? You get to choose.
The question is not 'Can you make a difference?' You already do make a difference. It's just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.
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