Janet Burroway Quotes

#1. Part of the trouble is that I've never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don't all land like a child out of an apple tree.

Janet Burroway

#2. What is the pattern of change?

Janet Burroway

#3. Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.

Janet Burroway

#4. In Literature, only trouble is interesting.

Janet Burroway

#5. I sit and pass judgment on myself: this is dull, this is unclear, this is insignificant: ergo I am dull, I am unclear, I am insignificant.

Janet Burroway

#6. The human desire to know why is as powerful as the desire to know what happened next, and it is a desire of a higher order.

Janet Burroway

#7. The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate.

Janet Burroway

#8. If character is the foreground of fiction, setting is the background, and as in a painting's composition, the foreground may be in harmony or in conflict with the background.

Janet Burroway

#9. What matters is not publication or success (success is bad for your prose) but the practice of the imaginative act. Our damaged values depend on it.

Janet Burroway

#10. Reject without regret whatever seems on reflection wrongheaded, dull, destructive, or irrelevant to your vision. It's just as important to be able to discriminate between helpful and unhelpful criticism as it is to be able to write.

Janet Burroway