Quotes

There's a scene in The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk in which three writers give advice to a younger writer. They talk like the three witches advising Macbeth before his head is separated from his body: “Start collecting proverbs, sayings, anecdotes, jokes, aphorisms, lines of poetry, and poetry anthologies." They do not offer standards for the collection, as if to say it is no use doing anything less than remembering everything. V.S. Naipal, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, seems to have taken the idea to heart; when a youngster he used to repeat to himself every line of a conversation he had just had so that he could one day write all about it.

“On the subject of personal style: the apprentice writer always begins by imitating those who came before him. This is born of necessity. Do not children also learn to speak by imitating others?”

The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk