Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Dufresne
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 30
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Went
Edit
Open
Edits
Creative
Energetic
Chance
Prose
Process
Suppose
Energy
Discover
Comes
Clean
Crafting
Ends
Beginning
Revision

More quotes by John Dufresne

Image
As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.
John Dufresne
Image
Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.
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
A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
John Dufresne
Image
Place is character. And all writing is regional.
John Dufresne
Image
We all sleep with the corpses of our dead lovers.
John Dufresne
Image
A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.
John Dufresne
Image
The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.
John Dufresne
Image
I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.
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
I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.
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
If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.
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
Every person in therapy has a love disorder.
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
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
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