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POEMS by: Michael Ryan

When I was Conceived
The Writer’s Almanac for January 14, 2016

When I Was Conceived
The Writer’s Almanac for June 14, 2015

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories’ shadows—and they’re grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams

  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham

  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell

  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao

  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer

  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer

  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.” —Iris Murdoch

  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” —William Carlos Williams

  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you’re doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote

  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it’s spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell

  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick

  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann

  • “Let’s face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron

  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow

  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow

  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov

  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman

  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt

  • “I want to live other lives. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler

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Read highlighted interviews of poets heard on the show.

Dorianne Laux’s fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded the Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women.

Read our interview

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