Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review. Votes: 12
Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego. Votes: 10
There's only a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot. Votes: 8
Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it. Votes: 7
Anger makes people stupid. Votes: 3
We are only possible as what happened to us yesterday. We all change as well move Votes: 3
Everyone is interesting except the narrator in a first-person story. Votes: 0
Roscoe was spiritually illegal, a bootlegger of the soul, a mythic creature made of words and wit and wild deeds and boundless memory. Votes: 0
You have to beat your own problematic imagination to discover what it is you're saying and how to say it and move forward into the unknown. Votes: 0