"The first thing that begins to happen when you begin taking yourself seriously as a writer is this imaginary writer’s block that people talk about, but I never really suffered from. But there’s this barrier between the spoken word and the written word, once you set something down in writing it’s supposed to be set in stone or you take on this funny attitude that writing is unnatural…"

Frank Chin Literature See all quotes by Frank Chin →

React to this quote

More by Frank Chin

“I am out of theatre. I will not work with any theatre, producer, writer, director, or actor who plays and lives the stereotype. So I write fiction, essays, and articles.”

“That this play is the first play by an Asian American at our existence, is proof of the great success white racism has had with us. America might love us. But America’s love is not good. It’s racist love. I don’t want it.”

“My main concern was to write a novel that uses all of this stuff that is accessible, to write a novel that deals with white racism and Chinese American history and the real Chinese fairy tales and the heroic tradition, and to demonstrate that a Chinese American could do all of this without sending whites up the wall or alienating anybody…”

Resonant Thoughts

"The ‘novel’ is a publishing convention that deforms the story. If more attention were given to form there would be fewer novels and better stories. There's no reason a publisher can’t put out a story …"

— Philip Ó Ceallaigh

Literature1968

#writing

"Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here…"

— Thomas Carlyle

Philosophy1795–1881

#art

"The simple fact is that nothing would be more harmful to the post-war economic and social welfare of our country than that the Tory Party should again have charge of the nation's affairs. The Tory rec…"

— Clement Attlee

Politics1883–1967

#freedom

"We had to make certain that violence and intimidation and impossible demands could not win. There would have been neither freedom nor order in Britain if we had given in to violence. There would have …"

— Margaret Thatcher

Politics1925–2013

#freedom