Quote

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

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
Father
Thought
Bedtime
Wolves
Invented
Fairy
Tales
Standards
Told

More quotes by John Dufresne

Image
We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.
John Dufresne
Image
If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.
John Dufresne
Image
A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.
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
You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.
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
I learned to love stories by listening to them.
John Dufresne
Image
At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.
John Dufresne
Image
Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.
John Dufresne
Image
The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.
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
Image
I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.
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
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
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
Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.
John Dufresne
Image
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
Image
Place is character. And all writing is regional.
John Dufresne
Image
A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
John Dufresne