Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes

Will the reader turn the page?

writing

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

writers

Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

writing

For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.

libraries

Writing, I think, is not apart from living.  Writing is a kind of double living.  The writer experiences everything twice.  Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

writing

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full.

genius