Monday, July 28, 2008

Authors on their craft

Match the quote with the American author:

1. The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. — D. Faulkner

2. I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why. — A. Flannery O'Connor

3. I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. — C. Ernest Hemingway

4. Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story. — B. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bonus question:

What living author wrote: "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."

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