Leonard Michaels Quotes

• Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.

  Leonard Michaels

  Apples, Long, Lust

  45 Copy quote

• Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

  Leonard Michaels

  Cat, Animal, Shy

  54 Copy quote

• Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

  Leonard Michaels

  Stars, Believe, Ocean

  33 Copy quote

• Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another.

  Leonard Michaels

  Sex, Mean, Romance

  9 Copy quote

• Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.

  Leonard Michaels

  Littles, Clarity, Mystery

  9 Copy quote

• There's hardly anywhere in literature where you don't find a triangle.

  Leonard Michaels

  Literature, Triangles, Crafts

  11 Copy quote

• There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.

  Leonard Michaels

  Example, World, Accounting

  Leonard Michaels (2008). “The Collected Stories”, p.404, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• The prose as such has to be singing the song the story is telling.

  Leonard Michaels

  Song, Singing, Stories

  5 Copy quote

• Sometimes language gets in the way of the story's feelings. The reader finds himself experiencing the language of the story rather than the story. The words sit there on the page like coins, with their own opacity, as though they're there for their own sake. "A man goes into a phone booth, stirring coins in his palm." "Stirring" is such an obviously selected word. You can feel the writer looking for the word as he sat at the typewriter.

  Leonard Michaels

  Men, Typewriters, Phones

  5 Copy quote

• I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.

  Leonard Michaels

  Species

  Leonard Michaels (1992). “Sylvia: A Fictional Memoir”

  8 Copy quote

• Is the story developing an attitude or victimized by it.

  Leonard Michaels

  Attitude, Stories, Crafts

  5 Copy quote

• Self-confidence can be crippling.

  Leonard Michaels

  Self Confidence, Self, Crafts

  5 Copy quote

• I can only gesture at what makes a story good.

  Leonard Michaels

  Teaching, Stories, Gestures

  4 Copy quote

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