Latest John Dufresne Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

  John Dufresne

  New Beginnings, Creative, Energy

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• 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

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

  John Dufresne

  Crazy, Paper, Pens

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  John Dufresne

  Fiction, Senses

  Source: therumpus.net

• We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.

  John Dufresne

  Sleep, Lovers, Corpses

  Source: therumpus.net

• The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.

  John Dufresne

  Strong, Thinking, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

  John Dufresne

  Emotional, Events, Fiction

  Source: therumpus.net

• Place is character. And all writing is regional.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

• Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Important, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

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

  John Dufresne

  Stories, Should, Response

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Knows, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• I learned to love stories by listening to them.

  John Dufresne

  Listening, Stories, Love Story

  Source: therumpus.net