Marilyn Hacker Quotes & Sayings

“The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.”

“Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.”

“Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.”

“Clearly, once the student is no longer a student the possibilities of relationship are enlarged.”

“Paris is a wonderful city. I can't say I belong to an especially anglophone community.”

“There is something very satisfactory about being in the middle of something.”

“I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.”

“We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.”

“You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.”

“The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior.”