It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.
Annie ProulxRead
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing is driven by a passion for storytelling and is enhanced through reading.
Annie Proulx emphasizes the intrinsic joy of writing, suggesting that a true writer is motivated by a love for the artistry of language and storytelling. Furthermore, she highlights the importance of reading as a foundational practice that shapes and informs one’s writing skills, suggesting that effective writing evolves from a deep engagement with literature.
Themes
WritingReadingStoriesCreativityEducation
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, a participant could reference this quote to illustrate the connection between reading and writing.
More from Annie Proulx
All quotes →No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.
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I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.
Annie ProulxRead
If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind, and if a drowned man can awaken, then I believe a broken man can heal.
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But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain.
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It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.
Annie ProulxRead
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I'm pretty omnivorous - in fact, I don't think of books in terms of genres. J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' books are no more Y.A. reading, to me, than John le Carre's 'Smiley' novels are spy stories.
Michiko KakutaniRead
Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.
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The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.
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More often than not, the most effective leaders have been shaped by teaching successfully in high needs classrooms. Because of their experience, they know that it is possible for low-income children to achieve on an absolute scale and understand what we need to do to allow them to fulfill their potential.
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Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
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My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
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