More from My Collection

Last Christmas my husband gave me the book The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing, edited by Leland Ryken. It has reflections from Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, Madeleine L’Engle, Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Francis Schaeffer and others. It also has lots of quotations. Here are a few I especially like about writing and story:


When we are at a play, or looking at a painting or a statue, or reading a story, the imaginary work must have such an effect on us that it enlarges our own sense of reality. Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water

The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The primary job that any writer faces is to tell you a story of human experience—I mean by that, universal mutual experience, the anguishes and troubles and gifts of the human heart, which is universal, without regard to race or time or condition. William Faulkner, Faulkner at West Point

My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says “look at that” and points. C. S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy

I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality. Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”

Coming soon: a poet, a musician, a composer, a culture expert, and more