John Dufresne Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

  John Dufresne

  Fiction, Senses

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

  John Dufresne

  Memories, Writing, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

  John Dufresne

  Crazy, Paper, Pens

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Lines, Firsts

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

  John Dufresne

  Mean, Get Better, Precise

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

  John Dufresne

  Motivation, Character, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

  John Dufresne

  Character, Childhood, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.

  John Dufresne

  Stories, Should, Response

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

  John Dufresne

  Father, Bedtime, Fairy Tale

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.

  John Dufresne

  Mother, Jobs, Sunday

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

  John Dufresne

  Heart, Gossip, Fiction

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

  John Dufresne

  Thinking, People, Gossip

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.

  John Dufresne

  War, Teenager, Kids

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Knows, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

  John Dufresne

  Drug, Attention, Maintenance

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

  John Dufresne

  Jobs, Careers, House

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else.

  John Dufresne

  Taken, Thinking, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks than from a successful story.

  John Dufresne

  Reading, Successful, Track

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

  John Dufresne

  Teaching, Writing, Fighting

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at.

  John Dufresne

  Notebook, Hero, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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