Erskine Caldwell Quotes

#1. To me there is no such thing as creative writing. It's either good writing, whatever the subject, or it's not creative.

Erskine Caldwell

#2. You don't love Buck. If you did, you'd have four kids by now. Wouldn't you? Now wouldn't you? A woman like you ...

Erskine Caldwell

#3. I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller.

Erskine Caldwell

#4. Influence is a very tenuous matter. I try to avoid it in every respect. I don't want to be influenced by anybody.

Erskine Caldwell

#5. Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Erskine Caldwell

#6. Preachers has got to preach against something. It wouldn't do them no good to preach for everything. They got to be against something every time.

Erskine Caldwell

#7. I was not a writer to begin with; I was a listener.

Erskine Caldwell

#8. I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

Erskine Caldwell

#9. He still could not understand why he had nothing, and would never have anything, and there was no one who knew and who could tell him. It was the unsolved mystery of his life.

Erskine Caldwell