Quote

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

Renata Adler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Renata Adler
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 19
Author
Film Critic
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Milano
Italia
Brett Daniels
Find
Phones
Ever
Mets
Self
Meant
Writing
Writers
Like
Drink
Rant
People
Sleep
Evident
Write
Hardly
True
Phone

More quotes by Renata Adler

Image
Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.
Renata Adler
Image
I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.
Renata Adler
Image
The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.
Renata Adler
Image
Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.
Renata Adler
Image
A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.
Renata Adler
Image
The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.
Renata Adler
Image
Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.
Renata Adler
Image
My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.
Renata Adler
Image
the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.
Renata Adler
Image
I took a little celebrational nap.
Renata Adler
Image
Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative criticism isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, writerly cliché and invective.
Renata Adler
Image
I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.
Renata Adler
Image
The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
Image
There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
Renata Adler
Image
Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.
Renata Adler
Image
There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political.
Renata Adler
Image
The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
Image
Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?
Renata Adler
Image
Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.
Renata Adler
Image
I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.
Renata Adler