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I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.

John Dufresne

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John Dufresne
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 30
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Always
Didn
Writing
Good

More quotes by John Dufresne

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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
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We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.
John Dufresne
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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
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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
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There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.
John Dufresne
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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
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A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.
John Dufresne
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The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.
John Dufresne
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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
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A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
John Dufresne
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I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.
John Dufresne
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Every person in therapy has a love disorder.
John Dufresne
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Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.
John Dufresne
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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
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Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.
John Dufresne
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I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.
John Dufresne
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I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.
John Dufresne
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As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.
John Dufresne
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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
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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