Jincy Willett Quotes

• Nothing was truly unbearable if you had something to read.

  Jincy Willett

  Unbearable, Ifs

  Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.59, Macmillan

  45 Copy quote

• Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.

  Jincy Willett

  Writing, Sentences, Happens

  15 Copy quote

• Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.'

  Jincy Willett

  Song, Writing, People

  6 Copy quote

• Arithmetic is the death of story.

  Jincy Willett

  Stories, Arithmetic

  Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.248, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• That's the hard work of writing. The imagining.

  Jincy Willett

  Hard Work, Writing, Hard

  Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.76, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.

  Jincy Willett

  Party, Thinking, Light

  Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.75, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She distinguished, of course, between the fictional world and the real one, in which she had to prepare dinners and so on. Still, for us, the fictional world was an extension of the real, and in no way a substitute for it, or refuge from it. Any more than sleeping is a substitute for waking." (Jincy Willett)

  Jincy Willett

  Real, Reading, Sleep

  Jincy Willett (2010). “Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather”, p.53, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

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