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J. L. Carr Quotes

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.

J. L. Carr
Memories, Lying, Writing

And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart—knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

J. L. Carr
Pain, Heart, Voice

The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.

J. L. Carr
Autumn, Air, Feelings
J.L. Carr (2012). “A Month in the Country”, p.121, New York Review of Books

A school is not a factory. Its raison d'être is to provide opportunity for experience.

J. L. Carr
School, Opportunity, Factories

You have not had thirty years' experience . . . You have had one year's experience 30 times.

J. L. Carr
Years, Statistics, Thirty Years
'The Harpole Report' (1972) p. 128

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