J. L. Carr famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit oneâ€™s endâ€¦.Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.
-- J. L. Carr

#Memories #Lying #Writing
And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heartâ€”knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we canâ€™t have again what once seemed ours for everâ€”the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. Theyâ€™ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
-- J. L. Carr

#Pain #Heart #Voice
You have not had thirty years' experience . . . You have had one year's experience 30 times.
-- J. L. Carr

#Years #Statistics #Thirty
The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.
-- J. L. Carr

#Autumn #Air #Feelings
A school is not a factory. Its raison d'être is to provide opportunity for experience.
-- J. L. Carr

#School #Opportunity #Factories

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.
You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
Last night I'd made love to a woman for the first and last time. It had been amazing and I had a memory that would shape the rest of my life.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
I walk up a dune to a beach and look out to sea, but it's 100km away. The ships lie askew in their dry beds, at anchor for ever. Today is my son's birthday. Thousands of miles from here, his healthy lungs are blowing out candles. I should be there but I'm here with another boy, who puts his face close to mine and laughs. I smile back but realise he can't see it, because I'm wearing an antiseptic muzzles to protect me from his breath.
Television is a constant stream of fact, opinions, lies, moral dilemmas, plots: an infinitely complex and sophisticated torrent of information. How could it not make you cleverer? The only people who ever thought television rotted the brain and made kids dumb were those with a vested interest in other ways of learning, or those who were intellectually insecure, usually about books.
Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.
Iâ€™m not a fan of â€˜write what you know.â€™ If you donâ€™t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing â€˜The Year of Living Biblically.â€™ That was kind of the point â€“ to learn.
The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.

J. L. Carr famous quotes

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