54 Quotes by John Dufresne

Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It’s a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It’s not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I’ve had.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don’t think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.

Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.