Bonnie Friedman Quotes

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  Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Believe, Writing, Successful

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  45 Copy quote

• Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Hard Work, Writing, Enough

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• Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Writing, Daily Life, Life Is

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• To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Giving Up, Book, Way

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  4 Copy quote

• our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Writing, Finest, Grass

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• We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite? Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?

  Bonnie Friedman

  Spring, Fall, Envy

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  4 Copy quote

• Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Envy, Mind, Scorpions

  Bonnie Friedman (2014). “Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life”, p.3, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

• Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Book, Reading, People

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• I spent the morning smashing fliesI killed one fly against the doorjamb. Another I stalked into the kitchen...A third fly wavered by the kitchen window. When I swatted, a wild ferocious swing, a whole trembling crowd shot from the window like pebbles from a blunderbuss, then settled back. My heart pounded. I felt flushed with disgust and irritation. Why must I always have such obstacles to my writing?

  Bonnie Friedman

  Morning, Writing, Heart

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• Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Writing, Successful, Keep Believing

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  12 Copy quote

• Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Mind, Fiction, Body

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  4 Copy quote

• How we learn is what we learn.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Learning

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

  4 Copy quote

• The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Real, Book, Sacrifice

  4 Copy quote

• What is this thing that has us chewing at our own selves, grating ourselves against our own sharp sieve? It is the act of stepping back. It is the act of separating, and judging. It takes only one because the one becomes two.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Self, Two, Judging

  Bonnie Friedman (2014). “Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life”, p.2, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Work, Thinking, Envy

  Bonnie Friedman (2014). “Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life”, p.8, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

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