PhiloLiterature

08/07/2026

"Writing is a very lonely activity. You go for days without seeing or talking to anyone. And all the time out there people are living happy, fulfilled lives—or you think they are. If I were happy, married with six children, I wouldn’t be writing."
– Anita Brookner

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, 1988

04/07/2026

"Writing is not like painting where you add .It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible."
– Elie Wiesel

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, 1988

02/07/2026

"The only thing more tormenting than writing is not writing."
– Cynthia Ozick

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, 1988

01/07/2026

"Writing is very difficult. It’s pure hell, in fact, quite often. But when it does really click, then your little boon is at hand."
– Robert Fitzgerald

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, 1988

30/06/2026

20/06/2026

"My greatest happiness is to be alone on my terrace, trying to guess the direction of the wind from the odors it carries. What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories."
– François Mauriac

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series, 1958

08/06/2026

In an interview with The Paris Review, Jean Cocteau recounts how Picasso once created Grecian columns with just a few strokes, to everyone's surprise. His dexterity with the ink was so strikingly remarkable that it sparked immediate applause. Cocteau, who witnessed the feat, asked if he had beforehand known what he was creating. Picasso’s response was: “Yes and no. The unconscious must work without our knowing it.”

Source: Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series, 1967

07/06/2026

Source: Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series, 1967