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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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John Dufresne
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 30
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Mines
Mine
However
Emotional
Events
Fiction
Facts
Unimportant
Life
Experiences

More quotes by John Dufresne

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Place is character. And all writing is regional.
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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.
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If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.
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The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.
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I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.
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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.
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Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.
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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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I learned to love stories by listening to them.
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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.
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As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.
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A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
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Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.
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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.
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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.
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With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.
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I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.
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.
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A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.
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At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.
John Dufresne