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05e63be We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add -- until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use. writing Annie Dillard
adf9fb6 It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another. writing value Stephen Crane
cbad4d6 In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die? suicide people writing life inspirational survival Paulo Coelho
757ddd4 One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself. writing success Neil Strauss
6b77363 On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men. literature writing Heather O'Neill
d4cd5ee poems are small moments of enlightenment poetry writing poetry-life writing-craft poetry-quotes poet Natalie Goldberg
d0d152d If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead. writing Lori Lansens
93b213f When you think about it, everything has been said before, in one way or another. It's only our experience of it that makes it new. words writing life Lauren Willig
31e26d4 I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too. writing Susan Hill
81bfb6a "Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word" writing reality william-blake genius Brenda Ueland
fa6485e I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter writing beatnik howl Allen Ginsberg
d22aaa8 During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick. writer writing humor procrastination artist David Rakoff
adb3ec7 Writing this book is not just me encouraging others to lean in. This is me leaning in. Writing this book is what I would do if I weren't afraid. writing Sheryl Sandberg
e1a3a1b Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. literature reading writing philosophy eros-the-bittersweet novels writing-craft eros desire Anne Carson
368bd24 Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. writing writer-s-block writers-on-writing E.L. Doctorow
0601a7b Here's another test. Of any activity you do, aks yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? writing Steven Pressfield
01c3eae After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'. writing myths legends J.R.R. Tolkien
8bac74c "Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy?" stereotypes writing originality Umberto Eco
9f4f8a2 I go on writing so that I will always have something to read. writing Jeanette Winterson
8c35e9f By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures. writing imagination senses images Wallace Stegner
4e2959d "Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let writing plotting Ray Bradbury
5dd3754 When you read a manuscript that has been damaged by water, fire, light or just the passing of the years, your eye needs to study not just the shape of the letters but other marks of production. The speed of the pen. The pressure of the hand on the page. Breaks and releases in the flow. You must relax. Think of nothing. Until you wake into a dream where you are at once a pen flying of vellum and the vellum itself with the touch of ink tickling your surface. Then you can read it. The intention of the writer, his thoughts, his hesitations, his longings and his meaning. You can read as clearly as if you were the very candlelight illuminating the page as the pen speeds over it. reading writing Diane Setterfield
93d3e29 What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again. writing stories Tim O'Brien
6aee0bc If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior. writing humanity society language Robert Bringhurst
f3a1b3f A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it's halfway to being just like every other bloody book that's ever been written. writing Robert Harris
d322dc9 Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't. literature writing nadine-gordimer Christopher Hitchens
40aed20 I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything. writing narration gertrude-stein narrative Gertrude Stein
75d5d66 Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair. writing-life writing imagination Annie Dillard
5434395 ...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my arguments by writing well. writing science-fiction Ursula K. Le Guin
0f25a3f In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. writing walden myself first self person Henry David Thoreau
36d797e Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? understanding writing-life reading writing Annie Dillard
ac3a440 "If you criticize what you're doing too early you'll never write the first line." [ criticism writing self-critique creative-writing self-confidence Max Frisch
ef0261c On November 18 of alternate years Mr Earbrass begins writing 'his new novel'. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which might apply. writing Edward Gorey
d6a9e1e I scan the room. Catherine is writing quickly, her light brown hair falling over her face. She is left-handed, and because she writes in pencil her left arm is silver from wrist to elbow. writing Sara Gruen
1f146d5 I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death. writing Ernest Hemingway
3677a30 In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them. reading writing Natalie Goldberg
1266b09 I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply? writing dostoyevsky hemingway Ernest Hemingway
4ee6e14 Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. writing victims craft novels John Irving
1955887 If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination. Artistic accounts include severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us. A travel book may tell us, for example, that the narrator journeyed through the afternoon to reach the hill town of X and after a night in its medieval monastery awoke to a misty dawn. But we never simply 'journey through an afternoon'. We sit in a train. Lunch digests awkwardly within us. The seat cloth is grey. We look out the window at a field. We look back inside. A drum of anxieties resolves in our consciousness. We notice a luggage label affixed to a suitcase in a rack above the seats opposite. We tap a finger on the window ledge. A broken nail on an index finger catches a thread. It starts to rain. A drop wends a muddy path down the dust-coated window. We wonder where our ticket might be. We look back at the field. It continues to rain. At last, the train starts to move. It passes an iron bridge, after which it inexplicably stops. A fly lands on the window And still we may have reached the end only of the first minute of a comprehensive account of the events lurking within the deceptive sentence 'He journeyed through the afternoon'. A storyteller who provides us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearking us out with repetitions, misleading emphases[,] and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Burdak Electronics, the safety handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card[,] and a fly that lands first on the rim and then the centre of a laden ashtray. Which explains the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present. story travel writing Alain de Botton
acc78b1 ...there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation. writing humor ink P.G. Wodehouse
cfaaf2c You can write about anything for children as long as you've got humour. writing roald-dahl Roald Dahl
feddf18 "Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his book in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, and of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. The hatred for my father melted. I loved my father, poor, suffering, haunted wretch. I loved my mother too, and all my family. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write. The week before I left town the draft board summoned me to Sacramento for my physical. I was glad to go. Someone other than myself could make my decisions. The army turned me down. I had asthma. Inflammation of the bronchial tubes. "That's nothing. I've always had it." "See your doctor." I got the needed information from a medical book at the public library. Was asthma fatal? It could be. And so be it. Dostoyevsky had epilepsy, I had asthma. To write well a man must have a fatal ailment. It was the only way to deal with the presence of death." writing inspiration John Fante
a53d503 Pen-bereavement is a serious matter. writing pens pen writers Anne Fadiman
dc64b8a I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes. writing Jen Lancaster
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
29c6c68 To everyone who thinks writing a sequel should be easy because you've already clreated the universe: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. No. writing sequels John Scalzi
ed5dd08 To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide-- a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere. writing Rebecca Solnit
055d10a "Excerpt from Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this - letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write. writing profiteerng publishers Ursula K Le Guin
e28d596 There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer's estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged. writing Annie Dillard
9762bbc The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo's Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracana is still crying over Brazil's 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mames in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich's Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say. writing humanity soccer Eduardo Galeano
f81b237 You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance. dance writing Anne Lamott
cdde669 Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. writing inspirational Ray Bradbury
a3b5d3f They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond. reading writing telepathy language Orson Scott Card
676bcf2 He wasn't, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us-- except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all. But there was no point in being angry with him. jealousy writing resentment Bret Easton Ellis
1c77d37 Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important. writing society culture talent James Baldwin
ff4a238 I want to write. I've already told my mother: That's what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. [...] She's against it, it's not worthy, it's not real work, it's nonsense. Later she said, A childish idea. writing Marguerite Duras
9dc891a At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be. independence writing death nadine-gordimer Christopher Hitchens
4d25709 There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say. writing truth authorship Arthur Schopenhauer
b73174e It is easier to write a book with footnotes than the same book written so that children can understand it. writing Fulton J. Sheen
8d10ad0 Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures. story writing horror Henry James
4c50b80 For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out. writing short-stories Eudora Welty
f0cb4b4 I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.) lies writer writing reality fantasy compulsive-lying crazy-bitch out-of-touch-with-reality wannabewriter superiority-complex self-righteous egotistical vainity vain pretending wannabe ego smile smiling liar lie Gillian Flynn
bfb4d3e The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good. writing-life humour writing letters P.G. Wodehouse
70cba04 "STRAUSS:Have you ever thought about putting those experiences into a book? RICHIE:I did decide to write about what i experienced in climbing to the top. And finally when I got there, I discovered what was at the top.You know what was there? experiences writing life finally top climbing Neil Strauss
842f7bb "The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have writing Raymond Chandler
991b6a6 All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius. writing romance-novels P.D. James
958e952 "After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines--well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads--that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco--the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me." -- poetry writing klee psychic-improvisation jazz Denis Johnson
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
ed32682 One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. writing Edmund Spenser
d08c4e4 For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone. words writing okayness Markus Zusak
6823699 Come, let's be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer. writing Gustave Flaubert
c3ba936 "One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?" [ limitations writing inventiveness dullness familiarity craft creative-process knowledge Ken Kesey
dd81854 Miss Abigail, I want to be an author because writers know when a person is lonely. I mean, when Molly read me some books, those writers reached out and said, Look Gideon, we know about your loneliness and we know you're feeling downtrodden. And they said...I'll stand up for you. You're not lone anymore. writing inspirational lonely Leon Uris
13abb5f Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. words writing where-i-m-most-likely-to-find-it Haruki Murakami
e821b61 "After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines--well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads--that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco--the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me." poetry writing klee psychic-improvisation jazz Denis Johnson
5f92183 ...escribir lo que no se habia vivido, lo que solo se habia querido vivir, era tambien una manera --cobarde y timida-- de vivirlo... writing Mario Vargas Llosa
2ce966a "Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")" writing writing-craft William S. Wilson
1ed1305 "How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values? The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes". women writing fantasy femlae-agency male-privledge writing-femlae-characters sf genre authenticity sff sexism Foz Meadows
98628f3 Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head. writing Mark Haddon
3e52900 "God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? ("Disappearing Act")" writing Richard Matheson
3e5a84d The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story. tolkien fiction writing tom-shippey Tom Shippey
a42e17c I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it....By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you....Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. writer writing storytelling Margaret Atwood
4147265 Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you. enlightenment writing success life wisdom elizabeth-gilbert Brandi L. Bates
ed952cc It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them. writing proper-child L.M. Montgomery
ff6971c "But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away." writing screenplays Bret Easton Ellis
e9be4a9 When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.) writing tools nasa pens John Varley
cdde20c Making reality real is art's responsibility. It is a practical assignment, then, a self-assignment: to achieve, by a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving impressions, a lonely, unremitting, unaided, unaidable vision, and transferring this vision without distortion to it onto the pages of a novel, where, if the reader is so persuaded, it will turn into the reader's illusion. writing Eudora Welty
8bd2a2a "The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment." ( )" writing detachment critics insight Raymond Chandler
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
c7c77e4 I always run away from the simplest phrases because they never contain all of the truth. To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words, and those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning. writing truth Anaïs Nin
4874522 V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes. words writing design on-writing Raymond Carver
79f7833 Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together. writing-life writing screenwriting writing-process Darlene Craviotto
7e3b331 The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage. writing Philip Pullman
f5e9b1f It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something. writing John Irving
1a62c93 You cannot write unless you write much. writing writers W. Somerset Maugham
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
6167e05 Music shouldn't be just a tune, it should be a touch. story writing music song motivational philosophy wisdom inspirational advertisement album alliterations amit-kalantri amit-kalantri-quotes amit-kalantri-writer background-music background-score band catch-lines catchphrases concert drums michael-jackson movie-dialogue music-director music-industry music-quotes musicians playing pop script-writing scriptwriting speechwriting tag-lines vocal singer book-writing essay script instruments sound proverbs rock creative-writing rhetoric guitar singing novel-writing movie public-speaking quotes tune movies melody characters knowledge speech artist soul touch Amit Kalantri
640372b There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. (Interview with , 1958) writing omission creative-process Ernest Hemingway
236a688 Now may this little Book a blessing be To those that love this little Book, and me: And may its Buyer have no cause to say, His money is but lost, or thrown away. writing books John Bunyan
6a57e41 I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story. writing truth inspirational talent Joan Didion
1ae6141 Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world. writing Michael Chabon
945d6ed "I have so often been asked the question: "But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?" And my answer has always been: "It was God's will that I should." And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, "In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny." writing destiny god life chain-of-life the-scarlet-pimpernel god-s-will question Emmuska Orczy
b841d30 To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice. words writer writing curiousity disvoery style ego Terry Tempest Williams
64604fb Write poorly. Write Don't Turn off the inner editor Let yourself Let it Let yourself Do something Write fifty thousand words in the month of November. I did it. It was , it was , it was It was But you have to turn off your inner critic. Off completely. Just In With If you can't write, run away for a few. Come Write Writing is like anything else. You won't get good at it immediately. It's a craft, you have to keep getting better. You don't get to Juilliard unless you practice. If you want to get to Carnegie Hall, ...Or give them a lot of money. Like anything else, it takes ten thousand hours to master. Just like Malcolm Gladwell says. So Get your down. Let it Let it edit. But don't edit as you type, that just slows the brain down. Find a daily practice, for me it's blogging every day. And it's The you write, the it gets. The more it is a the less a It's not for it's not for a it's just to get your thoughts You they want to come So Make it a practice. And write write write with and it may end up being writing Colleen Hoover
3b4bc3a I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly. writing Khaled Hosseini
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
1ac0174 "In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said "It is the trade entering his body." writing work craft trade Annie Dillard
73e051e ... All who have brought about a state of sex-consciousness are to blame, and it is they who drive me, when I want to stretch my faculties on a book, to seek it in that happy age ... when the writer used both sides of his mind [the male and female sides of his mind] equally. One must turn back to Shakespeare then, for Shakespeare was androgynous; and so were Keats and Sterne and Cowper and Lamb and Coleridge. Shelley perhaps was sexless. Milton and Ben Jonson had a dash too much of the male in them. So had Wordsworth and Tolstoy. shakespeare mind writing keats Virginia Woolf
98a7e18 "God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them." God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch - man created in the image of what? the animals? - the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation." writing jonathan-safran-foer plagiarism Jonathan Safran Foer
c543160 He wanted to say: how could you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best thing you could do with the peasents was to leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting for those who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open. library reading writing ricewind Terry Pratchett
9d1e581 Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. blog depression writing blogger insomnia memoir bipolar-disorder recovery mental-health interview Andy Behrman
7cbebd9 "[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out -- don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy -- when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language." fiction writing show-don-t-tell language Francine Prose
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
4fa4b1c Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the finished piece transcends the personal. All writers great and small must sometimes have felt that they have become part of what they wrote even more than it still remains a part of them. writing Eudora Welty
140a51e There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more writing Gustave Flaubert
e93a95c From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror. writing genre horror Peter Straub
3294bdf To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation. If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while. poetry writing motivation Fernando Pessoa
297cf51 It seems as if I can only thing if I write my journal, it just connects the part of my head that is busy doing things with the part that is busy thinking about everything else. I know all these pepole are so busy because they love each other and me. We are a noisy crowd of love writing thinking Nancy E. Turner
b97336a [A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange. immortality writing unfinished-works fame G.K. Chesterton
8161539 Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. words literature writing fonts typeface typography power letters H.G. Wells
61bc21b In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames. writing imagination obviousness middle-ages fire Umberto Eco
fb3186d So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened. reading writing readers-and-writers writing-craft writing-process Annie Dillard
d476196 The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart. words poetry writing Kate DiCamillo
fbbb7d9 "[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of them." writing novels focus P.G. Wodehouse
7ea3795 At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me. writing Isabel Allende
7b71a01 As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches . writing curiosity J.R.R. Tolkien
8e2b746 He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with. writing philosophy perspective Alain de Botton
b1b6fd7 The R is the wrong way roond and you left the A and a Y out of Anybody,' said Jeannie, because it is a wife's job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride. 'Ach, wumman, I didna' ken which way the fat man wuz walkin',' said Rob, airly waving a hand. 'Ye canna trust the fat man. That's the kind of thing us nat'ral writin' folk knows about. One day he might walk this way, next day he might walk that way. writing Terry Pratchett
79db7f7 Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk? Then, leave me to my foolishness. literature feelings writing empathy Piers Anthony
32eb56b Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. emotion writing Ernest Hemingway
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
9451be3 There's one kind of writing that's always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I've spend an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle's motivation and I would have watched Medelin in the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. I've seen Korn in concert three times and liked them once. I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. I own a very expensive robot that doesn't do anything. I am open to the possibility that everyting has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture. writing Chuck Klosterman
fbf888a Fragments are the only forms I trust. writing trust truth form Donald Barthelme
8d4739b For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph -- and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting. writing romance-novels Leigh Michaels
fd13651 At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another. writing speaking Leo Tolstoy
844e0df Writing had always helped her, before. It always clarified her feelings and her thoughts, and she never felt like she could understand something fully until the very minute that she'd written about it, as if each story was one she told herself and her readers, at the same time. writing inspirational Lisa Scottoline
8fa4bf7 Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art. writing Donald Barthelme
6ee6a8e A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on. writing Marcel Proust
b97d61b A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. writing Anne Lamott
e17e777 Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details. writing natalie-goldberg Natalie Goldberg
c8dca5e I'm interested in things women do that aren't spoken about. Manto's stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster. literature women writing life pakistani saadat-hasan-manto pakistan taboo stories Mohsin Hamid
4f4a0c7 One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer. writing living James Salter
8f0d876 I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I'm very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be. writing creative-process Elizabeth Gilbert
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