“Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.”
Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbirdand A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her
... See moreAnna Quindlen • Anna Quindlen's Commencement Address at Villanova
The noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks had this to say about originality, in his essay “Prodigies” from the book An Anthropologist on Mars: Creativity, as usually understood, entails not only a “what,” a talent, but a “who”—strong personal characteristics, a strong identity, personal sensibility, a personal style, which flow into the talent,
... See moreHaruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation: The master storyteller on writing and creativity
— Ralph Waldo Emerson