I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

quote by Jose Saramago
Added by Lucian Velea
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I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

quote by Oliver Stone
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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0005 Totally Boring Poem

I’m totally bored by:

poems that sound like other poems

poems that try to sound unlike any other poems

poets who never take risks

poets who think that taking risks
makes them good poets

poems with 'meaning'

poems with no meaning

poets who slag off other poets
as if that achieves something

poets that tell you that rhyme

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
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All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

anonym
Added by Lucian Velea
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

classic quote by T.S. Eliot
Added by Lucian Velea
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Before a Poetry Reading

'Poet! Poet! Poet! Poet! '
I'm feeling nervous but I mustn't show it!

'Poet! Poet! Poet! Poet! '
I hope to heaven that I won't blow it!

'Poet! Poet! Poet! Poet! '
I mustn't reveal that I'm a second-rate poet!
I'm only a rhymer, but they don't know it!
If you've got no talent you'll have to grow it!

'Poet! Poet! Poet! Poet! '

poem by John Thorkild Ellison
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A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

quote by Terence Rattigan
Added by Lucian Velea
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Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

classic quote by T.S. Eliot (1920)
Added by Lucian Velea
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The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.

quote by Timothy West
Added by Lucian Velea
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Good Poets and Bad Poets

Some poets get awards and think they are good poets.

Some poets never get awards and think they are bad poets.

Some poets think they are good poets only in their own mind

Some poets think they are bad poets in somebody's else mind.

Some poets think they are good poets in somebody else mind.

Some poets think others think they are good poets but they don't in their hearts.

Some poets think they are good poets in their hearts but not in anyone else's mind.

All are insecure, except those who get security from the opinions of others and that, alas, doesn't last and isn't real.

Some poets have left the entire scene and live only in their mind.

Some poets take criticism and don't mind.

[...] Read more

poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.

quote by Leo C. Rosten
Added by Lucian Velea
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The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

quote by Manuel Puig
Added by Lucian Velea
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Paperback Writer

(LennonMcCartney)
Paperback writer
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand
His son is working for the Daily Mail
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's a thousand pages, give or take a few
I'll be writing more in a week or two
I can make it longer if you like the style
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
If you really like it you can have the rights
It could make a million for you overnight

[...] Read more

song performed by Paul McCartney
Added by Lucian Velea
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In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

quote by Jose Saramago
Added by Lucian Velea
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San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.

quote by Gavin Newsom
Added by Lucian Velea
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Write Yours Now

The 'Journal of Death Studies' for April2004
(maybe you read it? It's in the
hospital library, top shelf
just out of wheelchair reach,
on the shelf labelled 'Reference')
observed that

nonfiction writers tend to die, factually, at sixty-eight;
novelists tie it all up at sixty-six;
playwrights lower the curtain at sixty-three,
and poets close their stanzas at sixty-two.
Well, thanks..

six years - looking on the bright side -
for your favourite biographer to write you up;
four years for novelists to borrow
your untidy life and win the Booker Prize;
a year for playwrights to emulate
the bitter dialogue of your later,
less romantic household years

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
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Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

quote by John Irving
Added by Lucian Velea
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In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

quote by James Broughton
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But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

quote by Beth Henley
Added by Lucian Velea
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All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.

quote by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Added by Lucian Velea
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