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Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

— Erskine Caldwell Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

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More quotes by Erskine Caldwell

To me there is no such thing as creative writing. It's either good writing, whatever the subject, or it's not creative.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

"All you boys seem to think about is the things you can see and touch—that ain’t living. It’s the things you can feel inside of you—that’s what living is made for."

God's Little Acre (1933)

I was not a writer to begin with; I was a listener.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Erskine Caldwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.