Quote

Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at.

John Dufresne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Dufresne
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 30
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Look
Romantic
Firsts
Began
Notebooks
Looks
Hero
Notebook
First
Poet
Poems
Writing
Afraid
Literary
Serious
Cherish
Full
Poets
Actually
Heroes

More quotes by John Dufresne

Image
If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.
John Dufresne
Image
What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.
John Dufresne
Image
I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.
John Dufresne
Image
Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.
John Dufresne
Image
Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.
John Dufresne
Image
As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.
John Dufresne
Image
The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.
John Dufresne
Image
Place is character. And all writing is regional.
John Dufresne
Image
In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.
John Dufresne
Image
A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.
John Dufresne
Image
With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.
John Dufresne
Image
Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.
John Dufresne
Image
Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.
John Dufresne
Image
I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.
John Dufresne
Image
Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.
John Dufresne
Image
The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.
John Dufresne
Image
I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.
John Dufresne
Image
Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.
John Dufresne
Image
The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.
John Dufresne
Image
The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.
John Dufresne