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c370780 "In less than an hour I have to hold class for a group of idiot freshmen. And, on a desk in the living room, is a mountain of midterm examinations with essays I must suffer through, feeling my stomach turn at their paucity of intelligence, their adolescent phraseology. And all that tripe, all those miles of hideous prose, had been would into an eternal skein in his head. And there it sat unraveling into his own writing until he wondered if he could stand the thought of living anymore. I have digested the worst, he thought. Is it any wonder that I exude it piecemeal? ("Mad House")" writing Richard Matheson
5143ff1 You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasn't much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity. literature writing Jay McInerney
fda5347 If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it. hamlet stories writing Thomas C. Foster
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? writers writing Julian Barnes
86a5dd9 "Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliche from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones - Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hold up in a cheap furnished room and write? You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.("Mad House")" writing Richard Matheson
c65f5ff I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im. depression education society writing John Steinbeck
1b95e2e Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel. I have fifty 'subjects' I could write about; and they would be competent enough. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that competent and informative novels will continue to pour from the publishing houses. I have only one, and the least important, of the qualities necessary to write at all, and that is curiosity. It is the curiosity of the journalist. curiosity journalist writing Doris Lessing
eae7200 Trust in the fictive process, in the occult interweaving of text and event must be unwavering and absolute. This is the magic place, the mad place at the spark gap between word and world. metafiction writing Alan Moore
b8b06c0 The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible. perspective storytelling writing William Manchester
5b6f3b5 In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers. story writing Pat Conroy
9cf0247 The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place. writing Charles de Lint
3e2d5e5 "A twisted spine condemned him to walk with a limp, but as he said famously, "I do not limp when I read, nor when I write." capable fire-and-blood limp reading wit writing George R.R. Martin
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")" cornell-woolrich crime-fiction fiction-writing noir noir-fiction short-fiction writer writers writing Francis M. Nevins
58ca4d7 "You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside of them," said Meggie..." writing Cornelia Funke
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." authors books conspiracy dubai dystopia dystopian-fiction economic-collapse economics end-of-the-world espionage future maine politics satire small-press spy-thriller writers writing Jeff Phillips
9782378 At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely. writing James A. Michener
ea4b750 If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence. 'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.' Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page? As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick. Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly. writing writing-advice writing-craft David Morrell
b640fef The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries. reader writer writing Vladimir Nabokov
811ea3e One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength. word-choice writing Harold Bloom
9937553 Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time. The secret of making it is simple: discard everything that is good enough. writing James Salter
b6743b4 [W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an 'idealistic' position, as if I were saying that the characters have an autonomous life and the author, in a kind of trance, makes them behave as they themselves direct him. That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers. The fact is that the characters are obliged to act according to the laws of the world in which they live. In other words, the narrator is the prisoner of his own premises. creative-process fictional-universe writing Umberto Eco
ae53d26 I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice. writing George Eliot
25261df "The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful." literature-writing novel truth writing E.M. Forster
0f81e20 An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before. perception writing Pat Conroy
aff077a Gemeinsam aber ist allen Menschen, die des guten Willens sind, dieses: dass unsere Werke uns am Ende beschamen, dass wir immer wieder von vorn beginnen mussen, dass das Opfer immer neu gebracht werden muss. creative-writing creativity german kreativität schaffen schreiben werk works writing Hermann Hesse
dae5920 "On being conscious of being a writer: As soon as one is aware of being "somebody," to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. [...] Most of the best fiction is written out of early impressions, taken in before the writer became conscious of himself as a writer. The best seeing is done by the hunted and the hunter, the vulnerable and the hungry; the "successful" writer acquires a film over his eyes. His eyes get fat. Self-importance is a thickened, occluding form of self-consciousness. The binge, the fling, the trip - all attempt to shake the film and get back under the dinning-room table, with a child's beautifully clear eyes." self-consciousness self-importance writing John Updike
ef32a68 The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. poetry writing Vladimir Nabokov
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... short-stories short-story writers writing Lawrence Block
77b3477 Leslie Marmon Silko whispers the story is long. No, longer. Longer than that even. Longer than anything. With Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath drink at the bar. Laugh the dark laughter in the dark light. Sing a dark drunken song of men. Make a slurry toast. Rock back and forth, and drink the dark, and bask in the wallow of women knowing what women know. Just for a night. When you need to feel the ground of your life and the heart of the world, there will be a bonfire at the edge of a canyon under a night sky where Joy Harjo will sing your bonesong. Go ahead-with Anne Carson - rebuild the wreckage of a life a word at a time, ignoring grammar and the forms that keep culture humming. Make word war and have it out and settle it, scattering old meanings like hacked to pieces paper doll confetti. The lines that are left ... they are awake and growling. With Virginia Woolf there will perhaps be a long walk in a garden or along a shore, perhaps a walk that will last all day. She will put her arm in yours and gaze out. At your backs will be history. In front of you, just the ordinary day, which is of course your entire life. Like language. The small backs of words. Stretching out horizonless. I am in a midnight blue room. A writing room. With a blood red desk. A room with rituals and sanctuaries. I made it for myself. It took me years. I reach down below my desk and pull up a bottle of scotch. Balvenie. 30 year. I pour myself an amber shot. I drink. Warm lips, throat. I close my eyes. I am not Virginia Woolf. But there is a line of hers that keeps me well: Arrange whatever pieces come your way. I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me. writing Lidia Yuknavitch
be17a40 Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories...cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful. writing G.K. Chesterton
e95029a I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. book writer writing W. Somerset Maugham
d4f8e7d I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class. publishing writing Piers Anthony
910f65b "There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art. writing writing-advice writing-craft writing-process Charles Finch
ab44536 "The Chicago literary tradition is born not out of its Universities, but out of the sports desk and the city desk of its newspapers. Hemingway revolutionized English prose. His inspiration was the telegraph, whose use, at Western Union, taught this: every word costs something, This, of course, is the essence of poetry, which is the essence of great prose. Chicagoan literature came from the newspaper, whose purpose, in those days, was to Tell What Happened. Hemingway's epiphany was reported, earlier, by Keats as " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' --that is all ye know earth, and all ye need to know." I would add to Keats' summation only this: "Don't let the other fellow piss on your back and tell you it's raining." I believe one might theoretically forgive one who cheats at business, but never one who cheats at cards; for business adversaries operate at arm's length, the cardplayer under the strict rules of the game, period. That was my first political epiphany. And now, I have written a political book. writing David Mamet
cdabd26 "The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law." ( , 1949)" mysteries solution technique writing Raymond Chandler
da82568 There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least, in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. memoir travel writing Anne Morrow Lindbergh
30a7fd1 I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it does not match the subtlety of our minds or emotions, the multimedia of our unconscious life. language literature reading words writing Anaïs Nin
f54b38a For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote. beowulf loss poignant regret sorrow writing J.R.R. Tolkien
47e5bec Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as written by isolate Miranda, raised on the romances in her father's library. fiction movies writing Michael Chabon
5efc27c "The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective." (Letter, April 19, 1951)" private-detective realism writing Raymond Chandler
edae8e2 "If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat." artistry literature poet poetic poetry pretentious pretentiousness the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice Annie Dillard
2810c01 The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper. In other words, that she's free. Not wholly free. Never wholly free. Maybe very partially. Maybe only in this one act, this sitting for a snatched moment being a woman writing, fishing the mind's lake. But in this, responsible; in this autonomous; in this free. (- from The Fisherwoman's Daughter) muse women writing Ursula K. Le Guin
f67af0a Mediante la fotografia y la palabra escrita intento desesperadamente vencer la condicion fugaz de mi existencia, atrapar los momentos antes de que se desvanezcan, despejar la confusion de mi pasado. writing Isabel Allende
0d61157 Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations--that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls. literature reading words writing Richard Flanagan
79cec82 Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway. Brianna: But it's not - it's a different kind of truth - it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it? author-quotes authors fiction fiction-writing fictional fictional-truth writing Nora Roberts
68f6e0d Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience. travel writing Paul Theroux
da823f6 The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough. writing Eudora Welty
af8c7d3 To capture the drama of the unconscious, one had to start with the key, and the key was the dream. But the novelist's task was to pursue this dream, to unravel its meaning; the goal was to reach the relation of dream to life; the suspense was in finding this which led to a deeper significance of our acts. dreams writing Anaïs Nin
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. computers technology typewriters word-processors writers writing David Mitchell
1bf41a1 "Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people." stories writing David Mitchell
acd5f30 I could not give up either of these worlds, neither the book I am holding nor the gleaming forest, though I have told you almost nothing of what is said here on these grim pages, from the sentences of which I've conjured images of a bleak site years ago. Here in this room, I suppose, is to be found the interior world of the book; but it opens upon a world beyond the windows, where no event has been collapsed into syntax, where the vocabulary, it seems, is infinite. The indispensable connection for me lies with the open space (of the open window ajar year round, never closed) that lets the breath of every winter storm, the ripping wind and its pelting rain, enter the room. breathing meditation nature reading writing Barry Lopez
a3639ec Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. writing writing-life Annie Dillard
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. writers writing James Baldwin
2509858 I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God's sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that's the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style... criticism intellectual intellectualism reading writing Roberto Bolaño
c4179a6 Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me. They painted themselves onto the ceiling. They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind. When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down , on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning. words writing Markus Zusak
e5b228c Harriet pushed her hair back and looked at him seriously. 'Sport, what are you going to be when you grow up?' 'You know what. You know I'm going to be a ball player.' 'Well, I'm going to be a writer. And when I say that's a mountain, that's a mountain.' Satisfied, she turned back to her town. writing Louise Fitzhugh
27d1aab "Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. 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." The art must enter the body, too." art artist artistry discipline literature read reader reading the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice Annie Dillard
d79139e ...if he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody else, any more than a woman can have a baby by watching some other woman have one. It is a genital process, and all of its stages are intra-abdominal; writers-on-writing writing writing-a-book James M. Cain
d0ac488 I'm back in these regions of fumbling dark uncertain creation, but it's my one and only world, and I'll do the best I can. writing Jack Kerouac
ab33c47 That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure--the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world] reading writing Alexander McCall Smith
7235232 Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it. life literature philosophy writing Ernest Hemingway
c6ae5e4 I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do. aspiration challenge craft-of-writing goals improvement skill writing writing-goals Ernest Hemingway
571926d Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged. encouragement literature reading skill writers writers-on-reading writing Ernest Hemingway
f47d42b As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end. travel writing Tahir Shah
249ebee There's something about putting words on a page in private that makes me feel powerful in public. writing Mitali Perkins
25bb5b3 There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden. protagonist writing Gene Wolfe
8be1fa6 Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good. writing David Foster Wallace
bdec34c If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace; none of these things can be accomplished by fleeing verisimilitude and mimesis, which together constitute perfection in writing. writing Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
86421ec Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You'd better find out if you're any good at it before you start charging for it. writing Sharyn McCrumb
7d05148 Albert's uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this. skipping writing E. Nesbit
4838597 Plato laments the decline of the oral tradition and the atrophy of memory which writing induces, I at the other end of the Age of the Written Word am impressed by the sturdiness and reliability of words on paper... The will to record indelibly, to set down stories in permanent words, seems to me akin to the conviction that we are larger than our biologies. literature reading words writing Jonathan Franzen
eddeec1 Ursula K. Le Guin urges authors to remember why they do what they do. Her argument is that writing is an form of art rather than a commodity. books writing Ursula K. Le Guin
4888206 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 maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. writing Ursula K. Le Guin
fa43874 Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like -- what's going on -- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming another third of it spent in telling lies. [Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness] writing writing-process Ursula K. Le Guin
22f5e40 if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. writing Anne Lamott
4f46da1 But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe. writing Madeleine L'Engle
19c697b A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in dark banks, or flat, ethereal beaches that looked like mirages of desert islands. I did not know then (as I know perfectly well now) what to do with such things--how to get rid of them, how to transform them into something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver--and this inability enhanced my oppression. observation writing Vladimir Nabokov
abe96b5 "Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. "You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you're making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up." stories storytelling teachers truth writing writing-advice Betty Smith
39c619d Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. work writing George Eliot
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 hotel-angeline susan-wiggs writers writing Susan Wiggs
3bb843e Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head. thoughts writing Anne Lamott
8db806d And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway. authoring book-ideas getting-an-idea idea ideas write writer writing writing-ideas Anne Lamott
4e2d456 WILDE: Oh -- Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can't be helped. The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal of oneself is a lifelong regret. Bosie is what became of me. He is spoiled, vindictive, utterly selfish and not very talented, but these are merely the facts. The truth is he was Hyacinth when Apollo loved him, he is ivory and gold, from his red rose-leaf lips comes music that fills me with joy, he is the only one who understands me. 'Even as a teething child throbs with ferment, so does the soul of him who gazes upon the boy's beauty; he can neither sleep at night nor keep still by day,' and a lot more besides, but before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself. Then we saw what we had made -- the piece of ice in the fist you cannot hold or let go. (He weeps.) classics love oscar-wilde robbie-ross victorians writing Tom Stoppard
ba065a0 Writers (my kind of writers: aspiring novelists, ruminative thinkers, people whose brains don't work quick enough to blog or link or tweet, basically old, stubborn blowhards) were through. We were like women's hat makers or buggy-whip manufacturers: Our time was done. writing Gillian Flynn
028040b "One word after another. neil-gaiman writing Neil Gaiman
3855012 The writer whose words are going to be read by children has a heavy responsibility. And yet, despite the undeniable fact that the children's minds are tender, they are also far more tough than many people realize, and they have an openness and an ability to grapple with difficult concepts which many adults have lost. Writers of children's literature are set apart by their willingness to confront difficult questions. writing Madeleine L'Engle
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. humor jonathan-swift writers writing Jonathan Swift
7ea308a Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic. magic populated thing writing Marguerite Duras
7ea0a8f I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it). creation writing Umberto Eco
5871e1c "There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en me retracant ces details, j'en suis a me demander s'ils sont reels, ou bien si je les ai reves"). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbe de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten." dreams imagination magic visions writing Umberto Eco
b05f51a "A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas...to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time. I just want to say..."Hello. We can hear you. The words survived." inspirational reading writing Caitlin Moran
fee0a2d Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting--that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art--and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort. book creativity curiosity inspirational joy life painting strangers writer writers-on-writing writing writing-life Yann Martel
3c970bb Always speak the truth - think before you speak - and write it down afterwards. truth writing Lewis Carroll
c19c042 My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons... writing Leo Tolstoy
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. writers writing Flannery O'Connor
3df2589 The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater. christian-writers novelist perception perception-of-reality perspective realism realistic-fiction writer writers-on-writing writing Flannery O'Connor
d47812c The real joy of writing lies in the opportunity of being able to sacrifice a whole chapter for a single sentence, a complete sentence for a single word... simplicity sublimation sublime writing Jean Baudrillard
9daf1f9 "Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself--and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home"--the everyday, metaphorical kind--can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way. writing Terri Windling
c3c5ff7 The hospital bulked darkly in the darkness. darkness form writing William T. Vollmann
1e8b974 And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B. thought-provoking writing Lawrence Lessig
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? gusto ray-bradbury writers writing zest Ray Bradbury
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. writers writing writing-books Henry David Thoreau
288ca02 We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice. writing Colum McCann
b1220d9 [The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. ideas internet open-government writing Lawrence Lessig
a24dc6b So now you have it. The plot, the whole plot, and nothing but the plot. plot sethos writing Elizabeth Peters
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. dying writer writers writing Cornell Woolrich
1819538 That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. writing J.D. Salinger
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. reason why why-writers-write writers writers-on-writing writing Joy Williams
4fc4569 "It was our passion for words and our ardent desire to write that drew me and Michael together, and the same that drove us apart. Michael wanted to be a great playwright, like the former master Moliere. He had high ambitions and scorned what I wrote as frivolous and feminine. 'All these disguises and duels and abductions,' he said contemptuously, one day a year or so after our affair began, slapping down the pile of paper covered with my sprawling handwriting. 'All these desperate love affairs. And you wish me to take you seriously.' 'I like disguises and duels.' I sat bolt upright on the edge of my bed. 'Better than those dreary boring plays you write. At least something happens in my stories.' 'At least my plays are about something.' 'My stories are about something too. Just because they aren't boring doesn't mean they aren't worthy.' 'What are they about? Love' He clasped his hands together near his ear and fluttered his eyelashes.' 'Yes, love. What's wrong with writing about love? Everyone longs for love.' 'Aren't there enough love stories in the world without adding to them? 'Isn't there enough misery and tragedy?' Michael snorted with contempt. 'What's wrong with wanting to be happy? love writing Kate Forsyth
f403a47 Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline. words writing Diane Setterfield
573254d The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge. literature quest writing Thomas C. Foster
2521779 There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock. write writer writer-problems writer-s-block writes writing Anne Lamott
665df0f [Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a misanthrope with a gentle, sweet nature. contradictions gentle insight insightful lesbian like misanthrope nature novels people psychological sweet women writer writing Andrew Wilson
802745a This thing that I created, this thing I made as a woman, for other women, is worth something. It's worth exactly the same as what a similar thing, built by a man, for men, is worth. writing Jennifer Weiner
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. how-to-write-fiction novel writers writers-on-writing writing writing-quotes Flannery O'Connor
5b1a2fe He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence. grace human-nature redemption writing Flannery O'Connor
de5a5d9 Unfortunately, to try to disconnect faith from vision is to do violence to the whole personality, and the whole personality participates in the act of writing. The tensions of being a Catholic novelist are probably never balanced for the writer until the Church becomes so much a part of his personality that he can forget about her--in the same sense that when he writes, he forgets about himself. christian-writers faith fiction-writing writing writing-fiction Flannery O'Connor
16d7f6d Those who are long on logic, definitions, abstractions, and formulas are frequently short on a sense of the concrete. writers-on-writing writing writing-style 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." how-to-write how-to-write-fiction talent technique writers writers-on-writing writing writing-books writing-class writing-fiction writing-process writing-skills writing-talent Flannery O'Connor
491641a Teachers say if you write a story you must never name what you're trying to write. Just do it. When it's over you'll know what you've done. writing Ray Bradbury
87896f0 After ten standard months I was done, acknowledging the ancient aphorism to the effect that no book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned. completion writing Dan Simmons
7a533dc We are destroying all esthetic standards in the name of social justice. literature writing Harold Bloom
e687b72 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. imagination sandcastles words writer writing writing-advice writing-craft writing-inspiration writing-life writing-philosophy writing-process writing-quotes Anne Lamott
7356905 "Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. ("Mad House")" writer-s-block writing Richard Matheson
b43cf71 The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you're sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read. writing writing-advice Guy Kawasaki
fea7388 How can I make a stranger see her as she stopped in the hall at the foot of the stairs and turned to us? I have never been able to describe even my fictitious characters except by their actions. It has always seemed to me that in a novel the reader should be allowed to imagine a character in any way he chooses: I do not want to supply him with ready-made illustrations. Now I am betrayed by my own technique, for I do not want any other woman substituted for Sarah, I want the reader to see the one broad forehead and bold mouth, the conformation of the skull, but all I can convey is an indeterminate figure turning in the dripping mackintosh, saying, 'Yes, Henry?' and then 'You? love writing Graham Greene
fb81042 "I rather liked him.I asked him to come and see us.' 'Oh Christ !' 'But, Bradley, you mustn't reject people,you musn't just write them of. You must be curious about them. Curiosity is kind of charity.' 'I don't think curiosity is a kind of charity. I think it's a kind of malice.' 'That's what makes a writer, knowing the details.' 'It may make your kind of writer. It doesn't make mine.' 'Here we go again,' said Arnold. 'Why pile up a jumble of "details"? When you start really imagining something you have to forget the details anyhow, they just get in the way. Art isn't the reproduction of oddments out of life.' 'I never said it was!' said Arnold. 'I don't draw direct from life.' 'Your wife thinks you do.' 'Oh that. Oh God.' 'Inquisitive chatter and cataloguing of things one's spotted isn't art. ' 'Of course it isn't -' 'Vague romantic myth isn't art either. Art is imagination. Imagination changes, fuses. Without imagination you have stupid details on one side and empty dreams on the othet.' 'Bradley, I know you -' 'Art isn't chat plus fantasy. Art comes out of endless restraint and silnce.' 'If the silence is endless there isn't any art! It's people without creative gifts who say that more mean worse!' 'One should only complete something when one feels one's bloody privileged to have it all. Those who only do what's easy will never be rewarded by -' philosophy writing Iris Murdoch
8254acb On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it? novelist purpose questions writer writing David Morrell
7263dd0 I've wanted to write about them for a long while, but it's a tricky subject, always put off for later and perhaps worthy of a better poet, even more stunned by the world than I. But time is short. I write. writing Wisława Szymborska
926a750 When you've worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. motivation writing Guy Kawasaki
3655c40 I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.' I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: 'My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand. natalie-goldberg writing Natalie Goldberg
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. writers writing Gustave Flaubert
b7a42b0 Stories migrate secretly. The assumption that whatever we now believe is just common sense, or what we always knew, is a way to save face. It's also a way to forget the power of a story and of a storyteller, the power in the margins, and the potential for change. hope politics writing Rebecca Solnit
d5defca Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that's one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring). writing writing-process Guy Kawasaki
ff9b108 It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice. practice writing Natalie Goldberg
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. james-baldwin wonder words writers writing Edward P. Jones
e134e1f An ancient writer says of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying it. rhetoric writing Edith Hamilton
79a116b Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! confusion humor jargon writing Lewis Carroll
75d488d I figure whatever I choose to create, I'll be neglecting somebody - so my art may as well make me happy. - Audrey Niffenegger writing writing-books Jen Campbell
4c3b763 I always shot scorpions with the .22 pistol. hemingway writing Ernest Hemingway
6611a63 "By the time I got to high school, I had learned to be more cautious about revealing my dreams. I was reading--and therefore writing--adventure stories. This was before I'd read Isak Dinesen and Mikhail Bulgakov, before Ernest Hemingway and T. Coraghessan Boyle, before I'd read something and really felt it, when writing was still just a compulsion, and my teen-age brain was only bordering on sentience. I filled pages of white space with swashbuckling, rapier-wielding, sidekick-sacrificing, dragon-baiting romance. writing Téa Obreht
36ab09a You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does. artisit writer writing Mitch Albom
8de9582 Why shouldn't I? I demand silently. Why shouldn't I become a famous writer? Like Norman Mailer. Or Philip Roth. And F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway and all those other men. Why can't I be like them? I mean, what is the point of becoming a writer if no one reads what you've written? Damn Viktor Greene and The New School. Why do I have to keep proving myself all of the time? Why can't I be like L'il, with everyone praising and encouraging me? Or Rainbow, with her sense of entitlement. I bet Viktor Greene never asked Rainbow why she wanted to be a writer. Or what if-I wince-Viktor Greene is right? I'm not a writer after all. fame inspirational writing Candace Bushnell
442dcdb Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he's far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can't afford self-doubt and he can't let other people's opinions, even a father's, keep him from writing. motivation poverty writing Wallace Stegner
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