Writers on writing

Erica Jong, writing in 1988: “Perhaps the literary artist is born like a woman with all her eggs present in their follicles; they have only to ripen and burst forth -and ripeness is all. But sometimes it takes half a lifetime for them to ripen.”

Susan Sontag in 1961: “The writer must be four people:

1. The nut, the obsédé
2. The moron
3. The stylist
4. The critic

1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence*. A great writer has all 4 — but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2; they’re most important.”

Angela Davis on Toni Morrison as an editor:

“She did not rewrite things for me, but she asked me questions. She would say, ‘what did the space look like? What was in the room, and how would you describe it?’ It was quite an amazing experience for me to have her as a mentor. My experience with writing was primarily writing about philosophical issues. I really had to learn about how to write something that would produce images in people’s minds that would draw them into a story.”

Davis on Morrison as a writer:

“This is something that really impressed me about her: her discipline, her focus. One time, I was sitting in her house in Rockland County, (New York), and she had to drive in to (Manhattan) every day to work at Random House. I would see her when we were driving in. When there was traffic, she would pull out a little pad and write something or pull out a scrap of paper here or there, and I realized she was living the life of the next novel in her mind, regardless of whatever else was happening. I have always been impressed by her ability to be so focused and to inhabit the universe of her writing while not neglecting the universe that involves the rest of us.”

Mary Oliver, Sand Dabs, Seven:

“There is no pencil in the world that doesn’t have the ability to strike out as well as to instigate. It’s best to write, to begin with, generously.”

From the Foreword to Long Life:

‘”Poets must read and study, but also they must learn to tilt and whisper, shout, or dance, each in his or her own way, or we might just as well copy the old books. But, no, that would never do, for always the new self swimming around in the old world feels itself uniquely verbal. And that is just the point: how the world, moist and bountiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”‘