Carol Bly Quotes

• your soul needs to be lonely so that its strangest elements can moil about, curl and growl and jump, fail and get triumphant, all inside you. Sociable people have the most trouble hearing their unconscious. They have trouble getting rid of clichés because clichés are sociable.

  Carol Bly

  Lonely, Loneliness, People

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  9 Copy quote

• It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

  Carol Bly

  Navigation, Theory, Difficult

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  11 Copy quote

• There isn't a thought or feeling that doesn't alter or deepen when written. We are a writing animal. That is why all of us feel we have a book inside us. It isn't an illusion. We have got a book inside us.

  Carol Bly

  Book, Writing, Animal

  6 Copy quote

• The six and one-fourth hours' television watching (the American average per day) which non-reading children do is what is called alpha-level learning. The mind needn't make any pictures since the pictures are provided, so the mind cuts current as low as it can.

  Carol Bly

  Children, Reading, Cutting

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  4 Copy quote

• The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.

  Carol Bly

  People, Forever, Secret

  4 Copy quote

• The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

  Carol Bly

  Principles, Literature, Devotion

  Carol Bly (1988). “Letters from the Country”, HarperCollins

  4 Copy quote

• The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

  Carol Bly

  Together, Story Writers, Stories

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  6 Copy quote

• Unlike lions and dogs, we are a dissenting animal. We need to dissent in the same way that we need to travel, to make money, to keep a record of our time on earth and in dream, and to leave a permanent mark. Dissension is a drive, like those drives.

  Carol Bly

  Dream, Dog, Animal

  Carol Bly (1988). “Letters from the Country”, HarperCollins

  8 Copy quote

• Literature has low enough standards. But we can avoid writing the worst literature if we make ourselves ask ourselves, every two or three sentences we write, 'Is that what I really think?'

  Carol Bly

  Writing, Thinking, Two

  4 Copy quote

• For a short-story writer, a story is the combination of what the writer supposed the story would likely be about - plus what actually turned up in the course of writing.

  Carol Bly

  Writing, Story Writers, Stories

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  4 Copy quote

• An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.

  Carol Bly

  Art, Ideas, Anecdotes

  Carol Bly (1990). “The passionate, accurate story: making your heart's truth into literature”

  8 Copy quote

• No work of literature is the product of only one or two conscious ideas. A story is mysteriously dense of meaning.

  Carol Bly

  Ideas, Two, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• No one is shallow and vulgar forever; sooner or later the whole species likes to be profound.

  Carol Bly

  Profound, Forever, Likes

  Carol Bly (2000). “My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Selected Stories”, p.51, Milkweed Editions

  4 Copy quote

• Apprenticeship is one of the dearest roles of childhood, not just watching Dad or Mother, but being taught a hands-on trade.

  Carol Bly

  Mother, Children, Dad

  4 Copy quote

• Emily was feeling the elation of conscientious hosts when they can temporarily escape a ubiquitous houseguest.

  Carol Bly

  Feelings, Elation, Host

  4 Copy quote

• I don't engage in self-censorship. But I do change everybody to have red hair in the last draft. ... If you give people red hair when in real life they haven't got red hair, I've noticed they don't recognize themselves, anyway.

  Carol Bly

  Real, Hair, Self

  4 Copy quote

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