9 Outtakes from James Baldwin's Paris Review interview - Rolf Potts
That’s one of the paradoxes of the writing life, that the way to originality is through imitation.”
Joshua Wolf Shenk • Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs
If you can do anything else with yourself, anything more certain, you owe it to yourself and to everyone you love to do that. But if you can’t, if you need to be writing, well, then, one of the joys of the lonely journey ahead, beta, is the comfort of reading. A day spent reading is not a great day. But a life spent reading is a wonderful life.”
Ayad Akhtar • Homeland Elegies: A Barack Obama Favourite Book 2020
I’m often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: “Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”
Maria Popova • Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Good Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers
But Quentin believed in reading as a lifeline to the past—to the store of experience that made the foundation of our species. By assembling our thoughts like risers in a staircase the generations would climb. Those who could draw from this reservoir would exist beyond the jealous shackles of time, grasp the utterness of contingency, and know the wi
... See moreGreg Jackson • The Dimensions of a Cave
He taught me that you have to do your research and that if you don’t stay on top of reading about other people’s ideas, you never come up with ideas yourself. It’s good to learn from others.