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fd5e507 The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. writing skill quality writers Ray Bradbury
92d437c A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. writing writers Franz Kafka
aa278eb "When Great Trees Fall When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. poets poem poems poetry writing death life i-shall-not-be-moved when-great-trees-fall maya-angelou trees souls peace soul writers poet Maya Angelou
a8fe92b No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o'clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons. writing novels writers Ishmael Reed
8205e97 The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. muriel-rukeyser inspirational craft writers Muriel Rukeyser
5d7b8fc Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this. love writers Vita Sackville-West
db8b69b You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be. writer writing writers Anne Lamott
c83259c Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. reading writing storytellers storytelling novelists writers Lisa See
f5ffe24 "There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate." epigrams fandom similes on-writing disappointment writers Margaret Atwood
640a893 Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory. persistence hurts stephen-king novels requirements talent misery remember scars writers memory stories Stephen King
f6ad880 My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Bronte, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Bronte piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky. writing writers Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt)
70dd2b7 Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together. writing construction creative-process destruction writers Ray Bradbury
e02f0c6 In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book. writing inspirational writers-on-writing writers Junot Diaz
9173706 "What is your advice to young writers?" "Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes." irony sex writing funny humor bukowski smoke alcohol cigarettes authors ironic writing-process drink writers sarcasm Charles Bukowski
1af7301 Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg. writing inspirational writing-inspiration j-k-rowling writers J.K. Rowling
ba2c86e Quiet people have the loudest minds. steven-king dark reading books inspirational inspiring-quotes authors minds quotes horror writers Stephen King
887693c Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough. writers Stephen King
1756225 , she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom. poetry loving writers Richard Brautigan
e9940ad Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves. reading life readers writers Lloyd Alexander
9a0ea41 Blessed are the weird people poets writing-life creative inspirational art writers Jacob Nordby
6c14311 The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly. writing writers Julian Barnes
e0f61c1 All writers are insane! insanity writers Cornelia Funke
7143aeb A novelist can't be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure) kimono novelists shigure writers Natsuki Takaya
4ba0f69 I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness. writers William Saroyan
7f4becc Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick. depression future reality happiness life assistance bupropion hays-office measurement mentorship publicity soothsaying horoscopes uncertainty-principle werner-heisenberg self-delusion perception virtues writers smoking Christopher Hitchens
d3363d0 As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. careers writers William S. Burroughs
5977d96 Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more. writing reality novels realism writers Michel Houellebecq
d216474 The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are. writing writers Anne Lamott
6c09794 The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes. seasons winter poets poetry writing apple april auden byron de-la-mare insomnia longfellow may morris nocturnal season september shelley spender tennyson pope apples coffee spring wordsworth milton fall hart-crane autumn tea keats night writers burns schiller Helen Bevington
5b83e01 Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. writing self-awareness self-recognition readers writers Marcel Proust
2ae82ca Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts. on-writing writers Dan Brown
35c789c "I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down." memories writing encouragement child young memoir childhood writers Anne Lamott
8639bb7 "Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?" criticism inspiration reviewing critique reviews on-writing creative-process writers Connie Willis
c1fba8e Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive. writers Salman Rushdie
0085625 Life ... is a bit like reading. ... If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it's yours. But what if such an answer gradually becomes less and less convincing? living readers writers Julian Barnes
149dcb0 Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. poets poetry writing reality writers creativity Julian Barnes
fd42a65 I believe the first draft of a book -- even a long one -- should take no more than three months...Any longer and -- for me, at least -- the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. writing stephen-king wise writers Stephen King
134ec78 Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I my hurt, and even it, a little, for now I could write a death, a loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own. writing writers Neil Gaiman
3cac241 Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say. writing writers Mark Z. Danielewski
17612f9 Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blase ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days ... the region of pure poetry. irony poetry writing fantasy grotesque novel writers creativity Charles Baudelaire
10c4464 "I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, "Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight." My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: "When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town - to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go." travel writing trust remedy self-recovery pen healing self-esteem writers bell hooks
613a84f "In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid. writers Neil Gaiman
83a9d04 After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there. writing interior-life life-of-the-mind writers Gertrude Stein
3a22dd1 (An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours. unhappiness writing observation writers Rudyard Kipling
511b1d1 "There's a writer for you," he said. "Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing." [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers--because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer--still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers." people descriptions insider perceptions writers F. Scott Fitzgerald
49f2bf8 ...hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. artists writing humor wilde rent writers David Rakoff
b17a952 The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds writing wisdom art-criticism music-criticism music-journalism critics knowledge writers insight Nassim Nicholas Taleb
e74c358 I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life. writing writers Stephen King
9062306 Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot. writers Neil Gaiman
d624444 The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level - there weren't any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader's head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer's work and skill and the reader's imagination. Parents, of a sort. imagination characters ideas readers writers Jim Butcher
a478aad The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. writing writers Julian Barnes
a8e0945 "Q: I want to be an author when I grow up. Am I insane?" Neil Gaiman: "Yes. Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author." goals-in-life authors growing-up goals writers Neil Gaiman
25f4435 Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods. shakespeare writing writers Ray Bradbury
41ec9b7 Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves. writers Mohsin Hamid
d48c653 When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? time writing death life charles-dickens regret writers old-age Dan Simmons
1a06e5f I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility. words literature reading poetry writers Marilynne Robinson
0b6eab7 If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that. writing readers writers Julian Barnes
52ffd5e "I often said that writers are of two types. There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many rooms there will be or what a roof will be made of or how high it will be, or where the plumbing will run and where the electrical outlets will be in its room. All that before he drives the first nail. Everything is there in the blueprint. writing creative-writing gardner authors writers George R.R. Martin
190abff Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry. writing writers Julian Barnes
ac897e9 I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language. words literature books dreams national-poetry-month famous-quotes-from-classic-books literary-inspiration endurance nanowrimo prolific-authors writers-and-writing famous-authors the-writing-life determination language genius writers creativity jack-kerouac Aberjhani
86472dd There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list. writing reasons craft why readers writers Umberto Eco
7a805e4 There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust. books writers Ian McEwan
8740c29 "Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can." writing-life writer writing anne-lamott first-draft first-drafts bird-by-bird writing-advice write writers Anne Lamott
70e36ff Lewis Carroll. He was an odd one. Real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Completely denied having anything to do with the Alice books. Daft as a brush. You'd have liked him! alice-in-wonderland-reference daft doctor-who writers Mike Tucker
cbdb451 Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence. writers Alberto Manguel
0279281 The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic. limitations writing writers Julian Barnes
a53d503 Pen-bereavement is a serious matter. writing pens pen writers Anne Fadiman
01bd2d9 Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries. fathers mortality sons writers Christopher Hitchens
d2d86b7 We're happier when the assholes are villains. gay villains writers Christopher Bram
4f61ccd Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else. A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth. writing mad-house work-life-balance career writers creativity Richard Matheson
66abaa5 "I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author." [As quoted in the writing creative-process writers Henning Mankell
1379795 The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy -- the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops. writing writers William Saroyan
4baeee0 human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions writers memory Salman Rushdie
1a62c93 You cannot write unless you write much. writing writers W. Somerset Maugham
58a1e10 That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them poets writing writers George Bernard Shaw
e6cf360 When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds - like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow. poets writing work writers Gustave Flaubert
4b9a26d What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies. literature writing writers Julian Barnes
b6d1373 A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly. writing writers Anne Lamott
5ea28d9 I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time. writing novels novelists writers Sue Monk Kidd
f9d324c I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark. writers Jonathan Swift
5ec9548 Only Southerners have taken horsewhips and pistols to editors about the treatment or maltreatment of their manuscript. This--the actual pistols--was in the old days, of course, we no longer succumb to the impulse. But it is still there, within us. manuscripts southerners writers William Faulkner
5f95f2d The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement. writing exposure improvement failures faults writers John Steinbeck
66e3431 Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words. writing imagination heartbreak trade-in disappointment writers Ann Patchett
891e95d "Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight....what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], "Tell your daughter three things." Tell her to read...Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the words beyond anyone else's comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. ...Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write well she will have to become someone. She will have to discover her beliefs, and then speak to us from within those beliefs. If her prose doesn't come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing along information, of which we are in no great need. So help her discover what she means. Finally, I said, tell your daughter to get out of town, and help her do that. I don't necessarily mean to travel to Kazakhstan, or wherever, but to learn another language, to live with people other than her own, to separate herself from the familiar. Then, when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar, and will give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things. Read. Find out what you truly believe. Get away from the familiar. Every writer, I told him, will offer you thoughts about writing that are different, but these are three I trust. -- from "A Voice" travel reading writing writers-on-writing writers Barry Lopez
f931067 Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope--and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing--that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that...' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already. It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so. writing books authorship book-reviews collaboration essays readers writers Christopher Hitchens
ee246c7 "An editor doesn't just read, he reads , and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone ( = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book , Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good." In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves--this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it." reading writing editing revision freedom-of-thought thought writers Susan Bell
ce26af6 "I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as they interacted with him--they were part of his "road," the infinite range of experience that always had to remain open to fuel his work." love pisces memoir writers Joyce Johnson
faeefbf Bir kitabi okuyup bitirdiginiz zaman, bunu yazan keske cok yakin bir arkadasim olaydi da, canim her istediginde onu telefonla arayip konusabilseydim diyorsaniz, o kitap bence gercekten iyidir. writers J.D. Salinger
421e852 I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced writer unbalanced writers-quotes writers Agatha Christie
f0eea85 When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist. catholic artist writers Flannery O'Connor
e376956 This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet. reading writing books readers writers Rebecca Solnit
462d850 Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book.' This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen. writing writers Paul Collins
ed6c966 "God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. ("Mad House")" writing writers creativity Richard Matheson
398cc17 "I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head." writer writing authoring authors write on-writing writers Anne Lamott
698a07e We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to enter into the minds and hearts of our own people, all of them, to comprehend them (us) and then to make characters and plots in stories that in honesty and with honesty reveal them (ourselves) to us, in whatever situation we live through in our own times: this is the continuing job, and it's no harder now than it ever was, I suppose. Every writer, like everybody else, thinks he's living through the crisis of the ages. To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most writing writers Eudora Welty
7381d48 "Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. -- Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library" -- creating library writing books writers Phillip Lopate
4395674 Art requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can be seen through each other. writing writers Flannery O'Connor
06a3562 The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? writing writers Julian Barnes
45c17d3 "Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again." metaphor readers writers Steven Pressfield
a7e20e7 Writers of fiction embellish reality almost without knowing it. lying lies writing writers Aljean Harmetz
c76512f Don't wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones can use the money. reading fame writers Thomas C. Foster
116532c Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a very harsh critic indeed. The others are sycophants, courtiers, servitors, entertainers. Shakespeare was a sychophant; however, he was and is also a very good poet, and so we continue to read him. social-purpose writers Edward Abbey
1b9fc85 "The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division. ("Introduction")" writer writing short-fiction fiction-writing cornell-woolrich crime-fiction noir noir-fiction writers Francis M. Nevins
01b8a97 "Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. "Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?" asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. "You always get your kicks pointing out defects?" retorted The Drippy Man. "Just curious. Never seen anything like it before." "I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants." "So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?" "Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?" Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. "He is quite sensitive," commented The Dry Advisor. "Who is he?" "A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does." writing future politics books dubai economic-collapse small-press spy-thriller espionage end-of-the-world conspiracy dystopia authors economics satire maine dystopian-fiction writers Jeff Phillips
1b4c676 The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one... writing short-story writers short-stories Lawrence Block
1eb8d62 People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. reading death writers Diane Setterfield
327f3a8 Then, as now, archaelogists and writers ventured where others feared to tread. history writers Janet Wallach
f4a03ac For most digital-age writers, writing rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites cost them months, meters of ink ribbon, and pints of Tippex. Poor sods. writing word-processors computers typewriters writers technology David Mitchell
49a3b27 Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity. writing-advice intellect curiosity writers Phillip Athans
702e2ae "You have seven writers in your basement?" Donald nods, signing, "They like it here. There's a poet, a couple of novelists, an opera librettist, an essay writer . . . . They don't usually make much trouble." fiction writing susan-wiggs hotel-angeline writers Susan Wiggs
8816637 He wanted to go home and lock his door and sleep. He was tired of the troubles of real people. He wanted to get back to the people he was inventing, whose troubles he could bear. writing writers James Baldwin
289b452 There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof I hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime. writing humor jonathan-swift writers Jonathan Swift
571926d Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged. literature reading writing writers-on-reading encouragement skill writers Ernest Hemingway
189d970 If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves--whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. writing writers Flannery O'Connor
98f1810 The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them. southern-literature writers southern-fiction southern-writers Flannery O'Connor
7a9ee34 History is made not simply with events, but by remembering those events, a double drumbeat like a heartbeat. History can be written not only with books but with ceremonies. Yet a real event read about in a newspaper is not always more important than a fictional one in a novel or play or poem. writers Christopher Bram
d513134 Penicillin was as liberating for gay sex as the pill had been for straight sex. penicillin writers Christopher Bram
bf475c6 To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it. writing writers Gustave Flaubert
308dd47 It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write. writer writing writers dying Cornell Woolrich
068dc6d The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him. writing writing-books writers Henry David Thoreau
31d72a8 Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. writing how-to-write-fiction writing-quotes writers-on-writing novel writers Flannery O'Connor
2632e8b "I still suspect that most people start out with some kind of ability to tell a story but that it gets lost along the way. Of course, the ability to create life with words is essentially a gift. If you have it in the first place, you can develop it; if you don't have it, you might as well forget it. But I have found that people who don't have it are frequently the ones hell-bent on writing stories. I'm sure anyway that they are the ones who write the books and the magazine articles on how-to-write-short-stories. I have a friend who is taking a correspondence course in this subject, and she has passed a few of the chapter headings on to me--such as, "The Story Formula for Writers," "How to Create Characters," "Let's Plot!" This form of corruption is costing her twenty-seven dollars." writing how-to-write how-to-write-fiction writing-skills writing-class writing-talent writing-fiction writing-books writers-on-writing technique writing-process talent writers Flannery O'Connor
70c8409 "The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, . He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that - and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych." grandeur critique diptychs reviews self-importance novels conceit novelists writers Colm Tóibín
003270b "What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted. "Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable..." "What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh. "Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity." "A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously." writing style talent writers P.D. James
ed42e56 The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too? writing gusto zest ray-bradbury writers Ray Bradbury
f88b7a0 gr adm fqT pnj shsh khtb r bh khwby my shnkht, chh mHqq brjsth y my shd novelist reviewers readers writers Gustave Flaubert
6796e62 Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it. writing ego writers Zia Haider Rahman
c74c1df "Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve -- hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve -- not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us. writing reason why-writers-write writers-on-writing why writers Joy Williams
1d0217f The wonderful thing about writers like [James] Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away. words writing wonder james-baldwin writers Edward P. Jones
ca579c1 My father once admonished me to master the laws that govern fine writing until I could weave my words into worlds. If ever I accomplish that feat, I will sign my name to the tale. writing loremaster writers Brandon Mull
1fb0bc7 In Ruth's view, they looked 'like a couple' because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them - they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such nonsense. (In part, it was because of her perverse ability to imagine anything that in this instance Ruth failed to imagine the obvious) imagination writers John Irving
d0e0d84 The truth is that James, like many other great writers and artists, had chosen his own loyalties and nationality. His true country, his home, was that of the imagination. imagination nationality writers Azar Nafisi
c720075 For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar. writing writers Richard Ford
8677916 Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out. life writers Jeanette Winterson
15b4e54 "That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action. writing fiction-writing pulp-fiction pulp writers Cornell Woolrich
af17bd3 Writers have this schizophrenic ability to both participate in their lives and, at the same time, observe themselves participating in their lives. writing participating writers Edward Albee
902eecf Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of group musicians and painters and dancers have always had. dancers musicians writing-groups writers Ursula K. Le Guin
40a3161 You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read. writers Nick Hornby
28c76d4 "Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." -- writing life kafka writers Ernst Pawel
eb3f89e It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from. being-true-to-yourself life-s-calling life-s-purpose muse being-real writers Steven Pressfield
766d50a "Yeats was straight, but as Auden wrote in 'In Memory of WB Yeats': "You were silly like us." yeats writers Christopher Bram
3ca0c81 Art is long and life is short. life gay writers Christopher Bram
1601d7d We all perform balancing acts between self and family, individual and community, private desire and group expectation. Gay people in particular must break with the groupthink of church and society in order to live their own lives. (It's why you still see half-read copies of on the night tables of otherwise intelligent gay men.) gay writers Christopher Bram
215e069 A work of art doesn't need to provide complete answers in order to succeed. It needs only to excite us into asking questions and give us a place to think about them while we become involved in other people's lives. success gay questions writers Christopher Bram
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