Jincy Willett quotes

“Nothing was truly unbearable if you had something to read.”
-- Jincy Willett

Source : Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.59, Macmillan

#Unbearable Quotes

“Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.”
-- Jincy Willett

#Writing Quotes #Sentences Quotes

“Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She distinguished, of course, between the fictional world and the real one, in which she had to prepare dinners and so on. Still, for us, the fictional world was an extension of the real, and in no way a substitute for it, or refuge from it. Any more than sleeping is a substitute for waking." (Jincy Willett)”
-- Jincy Willett

Source : Jincy Willett (2010). “Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather”, p.53, Macmillan

#Real Quotes #Reading Quotes #Sleep Quotes

“Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.'”
-- Jincy Willett

#Song Quotes #Writing Quotes #People Quotes

“Arithmetic is the death of story.”
-- Jincy Willett

Source : Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.248, Macmillan

#Stories Quotes #Arithmetic Quotes

“That's the hard work of writing. The imagining.”
-- Jincy Willett

Source : Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.76, Macmillan

#Hard Work Quotes #Writing Quotes #Hard Quotes

“You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.”
-- Jincy Willett

Source : Jincy Willett (2009). “The Writing Class”, p.75, Macmillan

#Party Quotes #Thinking Quotes #Light Quotes

“I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.”

Source : Aimee Bender (2011). “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories”, p.28, Anchor

“When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable.”

Source : Alice Morse Earle (2012). “Home Life in Colonial Days”, p.1, Courier Corporation

“Humor can help you cope with the unbearable so that you can stay on the bright side of things until the bright side actually comes along.”

“We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan”

“To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.”

“Songs are usually unfit for whistling - indeed, whistling (except to the person doing it) is unbearable ...”

“Many people put up with things that are unpleasant but tolerable, rather than changing them; their situation needs to become unbearable before they take action”

Source : Brendan Brazier (2007). “The Thrive Diet, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Plant-Based Whole Foods Way to Staying Healthy for Life”, p.37, Penguin Canada

“It is this ability to bear what is unbearable and to go on living, to go on doing what one is used to doing—it is this uncanny ability that the existence of the human race is based on.”

Source : Medea ch. 10 (1996) (translation by John Cullen)

“The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.”

“I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable.”