Annie Proulx Quotes

Quotes about:

• You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

  Annie Proulx

  Teacher, Reading, Writing

  48 Copy quote

• You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

  Annie Proulx

  Real, Tragedy, Life Is

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

  60 Copy quote

• It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.

  Annie Proulx

  Views, Feelings, Prejudice

  "Close Range". Interview with Matthew Testa, www.cityweekly.net. June 11, 2007.

  14 Copy quote

• I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

  Annie Proulx

  Writing, Thinking, Space

  "Annie Proulx regrets writing Brokeback Mountain? She needs to let it go" by Ryan Gilbey, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2014.

  19 Copy quote

• I wish I knew how to quit you.

  Annie Proulx

  Movie, Romantic, Real Love

  Annie Proulx (2005). “Brokeback Mountain”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

  42 Copy quote

• We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

  Annie Proulx

  Growing Up, Differences, Strange

  Annie Proulx (1996). “The Shipping news”

  22 Copy quote

• What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

  Annie Proulx

  Stupid, Writing, Self

  26 Copy quote

• Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

  Annie Proulx

  Teacher, Reading, Writing

  25 Copy quote

• If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

  Annie Proulx

  Writing, Character, Landscape

  1993 Time, 29 Nov.

  23 Copy quote

• What we fear we often rage against.

  Annie Proulx

  Rage

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

• Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

  Annie Proulx

  Rain, Hair, Rocks

  Annie Proulx (2011). “Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

  22 Copy quote

• We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

  Annie Proulx

  Life, Children, Acceptance

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

  25 Copy quote

• Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

  Annie Proulx

  Up To You, Handle, Knows

  24 Copy quote

• Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

  Annie Proulx

  Reading, Years, Wide

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

  19 Copy quote

• I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language

  Annie Proulx

  Language

  6 Copy quote

• If you can't fix it, you have to stand it.

  Annie Proulx

  Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind, and if a drowned man can awaken, then I believe a broken man can heal.

  Annie Proulx

  Believe, Men, Wind

  "Fictional character: Quoyle". "The Shipping News", www.imdb.com. 2001.

  6 Copy quote

• And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.

  Annie Proulx

  Adversity, Thinking, Water

  11 Copy quote

• And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

  Annie Proulx

  Pain, May, Misery

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

  Annie Proulx

  Pain, Ocean, Fire

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

  9 Copy quote

• All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.

  Annie Proulx

  Done, Handle

  9 Copy quote

• ... there are four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.

  Annie Proulx

  Heart, Men, Maids

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• I didn't have a chance to buy you anything," she said, then held both closed hands toward him. Uncurled her fingers. In each cupped palm a brown egg. He took them. They were cold. He thought it a tender, wonderful thing to do. She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift. To him. It didn't matter that he'd bought them himself at the supermarket the day before. He imagined she understood him, that she had to love him to know that it was the outstreched hands, the giving, that mattered.

  Annie Proulx

  Hands, Eggs, Giving

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

  7 Copy quote

• I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.

  Annie Proulx

  Hair, Play, Balance

  "Exclusive PJH Interview: At close range with Annie Proulx". Interview with Matthew Testa, planetjh.com. December 7, 2005.

  11 Copy quote

• Change itself is what fascinates me. I am drawn, as a moth to the flame, by edge situations, by situations of metamorphosis.

  Annie Proulx

  Flames, Crafts, Metamorphosis

  6 Copy quote

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