Literary Birthday – 29 July – Mary Lee Settle

Mary Lee Settle was born on 29 July 1918 and died on 27 September 2005.

Mary Lee Settle Quotes

1. I start with a question. Then try to answer it.
2. Anybody who writes is, in function if not in quality, a peer of anyone else who writes, if they are making a serious attempt to write what is true without whining. We can all learn from each other. It is not an isolated life.
3. I want them to know that it takes a great deal longer than they might be prepared for. There’s no formula and there is no such thing as an easy life after fame comes. You are still in a room alone; you are still facing the white paper. There’s no difference.
4. I write travel essays to sing for my supper when I want to go someplace. I write memoirs because they come to me and it’s time to remember.
5. If you set out to write for money and fame, as Freud said writers did, then you should sell junk bonds or shoot somebody instead. It’s easier.

Mary Lee Settle was an American author. She wrote the critically acclaimed Beulah Quintet—a historical fiction that traced events from Cromwellian England to 20th-century West Virginia. She won the 1978 National Book Award for her novel Blood Tie. She would later teach at Bard College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and University of Virginia. Settle was a founder of the annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She also wrote Learning to Fly. A Writer’s Memoir.

Source for image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Lee_Settle.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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