Writing is “very hard work and it absolutely requires all the conditions that make one a bore: You have to be alone a lot, you have to be rather sedentary, you have to be a creature of routine, you have to fetishize your solitude, and you have to become very, very selfish about your time.”
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“After a while you begin to understand that writing well is not a promised reward for being virtuous. No, every time you do it you’re stepping off into darkness and hoping for some light.”
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Tobias Wolff, The Art of Fiction No. 183, Interviewed by Jack Livings, the Paris Review Issue 171, Fall 2004
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5391/tobias-wolff-the-art-of-fiction-no-183-tobias-wolff
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