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.
Annie ProulxRead
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.
Annie ProulxRead
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.
Annie ProulxRead
It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.
Annie ProulxRead
Similar quotes
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
Richard M. NixonRead
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter BagehotRead
The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
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No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.
Maria MontessoriRead
I don't believe there are 'struggling' readers, 'advanced' readers, or 'non' readers.
Jacqueline WoodsonRead
Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered.
Herbert SpencerRead