KURT VONNEGUT

There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books.

I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.

Ashley Bryan
1923-2022

 

Ed Bullins
(1935-2021)

 

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson(1832-1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit", becoming the first Norwegian Nobel laureate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of The Four Greats (De Fire Store) among Norwegian writers, the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland. Bjørnson is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian National Anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet".

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSOn meeting Samuel Beckett

He gave me one of the greatest compliments that I ever heard. Someone asked him, “What do you think of Burroughs?” and he said - grudgingly - “Well, he’s a writer.”

JAMES DICKEY

A poet has got to find some way to love that white empty page, those words he hasn’t said yet.