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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
4d1c33f "That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. "It's all right," he said. "But I'd take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That's about used up, I should think." exaggeration metaphors mythology writing Wallace Stegner
288ca02 We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice. writing Colum McCann
d20fdf6 But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too. language storytelling words writing Madeleine L'Engle
c90300b The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction. writing Paul Theroux
2ce4e0f Did I come into this world thru the womb of my mother the earth just so I could talk and write like everybody else? womb writing Jack Kerouac
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
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
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
bc18244 Literacy: Blessing? Or curse? literacy reading reading-books writing Charles Frazier
f3691ad I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it. india travel writing Tahir Shah
42a73e3 If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian Porphyry, summed it up, he 'introduced Greek ideas to foreign fables' -- that is, gave a barbarous eastern religion the intellectual respectability of a philosophical defense. Origen was also a phenomenon. As Eusebius put it admiringly, 'even the facts from his cradle are worth mentioning'. Origen came from Alexandria, the second city of the empire and then it's intellectual centre; his father's martyrdom left him an orphan at seventeen with six younger brothers. He was a hard working prodigy, at eighteen head of the Catechetical School, and already trained as a literary scholar and teacher. But at this point, probably in 203, he became a religious fanatic and remained one for the next fifty years. He gave up his job and sold his books to concentrate on religion. he slept on the floor, ate no meat, drank no wine, had only one coat and no shoes. He almost certainly castrated himself, in obedience to the notorious text, Matthew 19:12, 'there are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Origen's learning was massive and it was of a highly original kind: he always went back to the sources and thought through the whole process himself. This he learned Hebrew and, according to Eusebius, 'got into his possession the original writings extant among the Jews in the actual Hebrew character'. These included the discovery of lost texts; in the case of the psalms, Origen collected not only the four known texts but three others unearthed, including 'one he found at Jericho in a jar'. The result was an enormous tome, the , which probably existed in only one manuscript now lost, setting out the seven alternative texts in parallel columns. He applied the same principles of original research to every aspect of Christianity and sacred literature. He seems to have worked all day and though most of the night, and was a compulsive writer. Even the hardy Jerome later complained: 'Has anyone read everything Origen wrote?' writing Paul Johnson
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
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
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
573254d The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge. literature quest writing Thomas C. Foster
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
4046c4d The mind has plenty of ways of preventing you from writing, and paralysing self-consciousness is a good one. The only thing to do is ignore it, and remember what Vincent van Gogh said in one of his letters about the painter's fear of the blank canvas - the canvas, he said, is far more afraid of the painter. writing writing-advice writing-process Philip Pullman
ca579c1 My father once admonished me to master the laws that govern fine writing until I could weave my words into worlds. If ever I accomplish that feat, I will sign my name to the tale. loremaster writers writing Brandon Mull
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
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
ff9b108 It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice. practice writing Natalie Goldberg
90afc7f "This was the time when all we could talk about was sentences, sentences--nothing else stirred us. Whatever happened in those days, whatever befell our regard, Clea and I couldn't rest until it had been converted into what we told ourselves were astonishingly unprecedented and charming sentences: writing Jonathan Lethem
774a4a0 In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in silence; his example could be followed by solemn historians who recount actions so briefly and succinctly that we can barely taste them, and leave behind in the inkwell, through carelessness, malice, or ignorance, the most substantive part of the work. writing Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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
16d9ffc To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round writing Gore Vidal
1dbbb6c "I remember arriving by train in a small Swiss town. I had walked up a steep, cobblestoned street that offered a sweeping view of the village below and a lake, which, in the late afternoon light, was like a great cloudy opal. And I remember thinking, with a sense of mounting joy, that not a single soul knew where I was at that moment. No one could find me. No one could phone me. No one could see me who knew me by name. For someone whose childhood experiences had pounded home the Sartrian concept that hell, truly, is other people, that was an awesome moment. I knew, at least for an instant, that I was free. That feeling is one I've sought to find again and again. Often I've succeeded, other times, for no reason I can figure out, the feeling of elation and freedom degenerates into a profound loneliness and sense of bitter isolation. But there is still something about arriving in a strange or unexplored city, in Hong Kong or Paris or Sydney, wandering streets one has never walked before, in a place where, only against the most astronomical odds, would one encounter a familiar face. loneliness writing writing-life Lucy Taylor
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
a73201d Enmerson's interest is in the workshop phase, the birthing stage of art, not the museum moment, the embalming phase. Poetry mimics Creation and is therefore sacred. More precisely, just as God may indeed be a verb (as Mary Daly insists), poetry is the act of . The process of poetry also mimics the process of nature. 'This expression or naming is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What we call nature is a certain self-regulated motion or change.' Another aspect of nature is genius, which, as Emerson observes, 'is the activity which repairs the decays of things. creative-process decay definition-of-genius emerson genius mary-daly nature poetry process ralph-waldo-emerson transcendentalism workshop writing writing-tips Robert D. Richardson
502cb88 I am like a prisoner who is trying to escape from jail by the wrong route. For all one knows, that door may stand open, although I continue to dig a tunnel with a teaspoon. writing John Cheever
38d2893 I realized Jack [Kerouac] was deeply committed to writing. Kesey was just as deeply committed to living and experiencing the lives of others; for him writing was just a part of living. jack-kerouac ken-kesey writing Sterling Lord
b5cd4b9 The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream. dreams honesty truth writing Jane Yolen
958afb7 Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising. writing Amy Tan
397bdc3 Have you noticed how just trying to impose any sort of chronology on events makes it seem as though a lot of time has been occupied? writing James Hamilton-Paterson
607a587 These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers' faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made. critics flaws jackasses pens tails tubs writing Jonathan Swift
4d31ca8 She used to write all the time,' Elizabeth explained, 'before she lost all that weight. Remember? When she was the butt of everyone's jokes instead of the girl all the boys want to date? sweet-valley weight-loss writing Francine Pascal
116559c Say you've just read Faulkner's 'Barn Burning'. Like the son in the story, you've sensed the faults in your father's character. Thinking about them makes you uncomfortable, left alone you'd probably close the book and move on to other thoughts. But instead you are taken in hand by a tall, brooding man with a distinguished limp who involves you and a roomful of other boys in the consideration of what it means to be a son. The loyalty that is your duty and your worth and your problem. The goodness of loyalty and its difficulties and snares, how loyalty might also become betrayal - of the self and the world outside the circle of blood. You've never had this conversation before, not with anyone. And even as its happening you understand that just as your father's troubles with the world - emotional frailty, self-doubt, incomplete honesty - will not lead him to set it on fire, your own loyalty will never be the stuff of tragedy. You will not turn bravely and painfully from your father, as the boy in the story does, but foresake him, without regret. And as you accept that separation, it seems to happen; your father's sad, fleshy face grows vague, and you blink it away and look up to where your teachers leans against his desk, one hand in a coat pocket, the other rubbing his bum knee as he listens desolately to the clever bore behind you saying something about bird imagery. loyalty writing Tobias Wolff
bba631a You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world. reading writing Anne Lamott
bceec9b Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. author first-drafts write writer writing Anne Lamott
43311a4 For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice Anne Lamott
c2e4244 There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. bird-by-bird on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice writing-help Anne Lamott
f6e4310 Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well. addiction-cure addiction-treatment-center alcohol-abuse alcohol-rehab author books chris-prentiss depression drug-abuse drug-rehab holistic-health holistic-treatment los-angeles-rehab malibu-rehab passages-malibu passages-ventura quotes rehab-center substance-abuse writer writing Chris Prentiss
717dcd5 I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you. the-literary-process the-writing-life the-writing-process write writer writing Annie Dillard
67c56e3 It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting. The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open. philosopher-s-stone philosophy reading soul spirit walking winter wonder writing Annie Dillard
8e1aefa Unless we remember we cannot understand. understanding writing E.M. Forster
180ad12 In the last twenty years the colleges have been emphasizing creative writing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nickel's worth of talent can emerge from a writing class able to write a competent story. In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class. talent writing writing-class writing-skill writing-talent Flannery O'Connor
b7403f0 We shared ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership. ideas sweaters writing Ann Patchett
c789a6d This leads me to the Higher Editing. Take of well-ground Indian Ink as much as suffices and a camel-hair brush proportionate to the inter-spaces of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible. At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. Maybe a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah and let it go, and 'when thou hast done, repent not.' The shorter the tale, the longer the brushwork and, normally, the shorter the lie-by, and vice versa. The longer the tale, the less brush but the longer lie-by. I have had tales by me for three or five years which shortened themselves almost yearly. The magic lies in the Brush and the Ink. For the Pen, when it is writing, can only scratch; and bottled ink is not to compare with the ground Chinese stick. Experto crede. writing Rudyard Kipling
976fd4d Just remember this, when the scream at last has ended and you've turned on the lights: by the rules of the game, I must always lie. writing Margaret Atwood
3e26939 The day before the Queen's Ball, Father had a visitor--a very young girl with literary aspirations, someone Lord Lytton had recommended visit Father and sent over-and while Father was explaining to her the enjoyment he was having in writing this Drood book for serialisation, this upstart of a girl had the temerity to ask, 'But suppose you died before all the book was written?' [...] He spoke very softly in his kindest voice and said to her, 'One can only work on, you know--work while it is day. charles-dickens death old-age work writing Dan Simmons
bb7a0d7 The writing of a book may be a solitary business, it is done alone. The writer sits down with paper and pen, or typewriter, and, withdrawn from the world, tries to set down the story that is crying to be written. We write alone, but we do not write in isolation. No matter how fantastic a story line may be, it still comes out of our response to what is happening to us and to the world in which we live. writing Madeleine L'Engle
22523a2 It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before. self-deception truth writers writing Iris Murdoch
6b5d763 The quiet lines matter as much as the noisy ones. writing Colum McCann
c720075 For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar. writers writing Richard Ford
0561bd9 Anyway, you don't know what's going to happen. I'm only just thickening the plot. --I'd say it was pretty thick already. Thick plots are my specialty. If you want a thinner kind, look elsewhere. plot thick-plot writing Margaret Atwood
6cbd8a7 I tell him getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to com. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to and what to say at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later we'll figure out the right order. writing writing-process Robert M. Pirsig
68cc804 THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. practice unit writing Natalie Goldberg
f064531 Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people's heads. That's the only way to make those fuckers listen. music writing Don DeLillo
a4f9cff And speaking of this wonderful machine: [840] I'm puzzled by the difference between Two methods of composing: , the kind Which goes on solely in the poet's mind, A testing of performing words, while he Is soaping a third time one leg, and , The other kind, much more decorous, when He's in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought, The abstract battle is concretely fought. The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar [850] A canceled sunset or restore a star, And thus it physically guides the phrase Toward faint daylight through the inky maze. But method is agony! The brain Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain. A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the will Can interrupt, while the automaton Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store [860] To buy the paper he has read before. literature paper pen pencil teaching writing Vladimir Nabokov
01bcc40 And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much better. writing David Mitchell
15213f6 Writers pay a lot of attention to wordage, because some publishers seem to care more about length than about quality and will automatically reject novels that don't fit their narrow standards of length - or will chop out extra wordage to make a novel fit. writing Piers Anthony
2384198 The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell. artist write writing Steven Pressfield
28c76d4 "Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." -- kafka life writers writing Ernst Pawel
ee0fe07 Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. façades fiction readers reading writing Iris Murdoch
3f8737c I am, I must confess, an obsessive and superstitious letter-writer. When I am troubled I will write any long letter rather than make a telephone call. This is perhaps because I invest letters with magical power. To desiderate something in a letter is, I often irrationally feel, tantamount to bringing it about. A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. (And, it must be admitted, of passing the buck.) It is a way of bidding time to stop. iris-murdoch letters magical obsessive superstitious the-black-prince writing Iris Murdoch
3afb8b9 The isolated imagination is easily corrupted by theory, but the writer inside his community seldom has such a problem. writing writing-groups Flannery O'Connor
28c11c8 It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much. writers-on-writing writing writing-fiction writing-style Flannery O'Connor
3ad1027 Early in 1967 Highsmith's agent told her why her books did not sell in paperback in America. It was, said Patricia Schartle Myrer, because they were 'too subtle', combined with the fact that none of her characters were likeable. 'Perhaps it is because I don't like anyone,' Highsmith replied. 'My last books may be about animals'. fiction likeability misanthropy sold subtle writing Andrew Wilson
bc4c558 Father is a school ... He always wanted to write books. But he became rich instead, so is not allowed. books wealth wishes writing Iain Pears
06bd501 Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world. clockwork difficulties optimism pessimism working writing Philip Pullman
426c597 The birds are in their trees, the toast is in the toaster, and the poets are at their windows. [...] The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong game of proofreading, glancing back and forth from page to page, the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes, and the poets are at their windows because it is their job for which they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon. poets writing Billy Collins
0add7f9 It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, whatever purposes the writer started out with have already been defeated. What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of an abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them. fiction fiction-writing writing writing-fiction Flannery O'Connor
fe35fa6 Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else. A little earlier I said that stories were about life; perhaps they're made of life. stories writing writing-advice Philip Pullman
54ad404 We were all journalists, professional truth-seekers, but one thing we knew about the truth that laymen were prone to disregard was that it need not be literal or factual; the unpredictable human personality was itself a fact. truth writing Walter Kirn
d7a5063 You wrote something easily in youth, and later you came to see how difficult it all was. writing youth A.S. Byatt
5b3c02c A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious. writing Terry Tempest Williams
23104f4 In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us. literature tameness wildness writing Henry David Thoreau
3868884 For that is what you are, that is who you are - you are an author. You cannot cease to write any more than you can cease to breathe...This difficult season will pass - your eyes and mind will inevitably be opened once more to the wealth of ideas all around you...And even if the ideas around you fall short of what you seek - even if, as you say, you have not the heart to write... perhaps it is your heart you ought to write of. - Laurie to Jo, on writing ideas inspiration writer writing writing-from-the-heart Trix Wilkins
d536666 They looked at her quizzically, came at her with assumptions, presumptions, what they believed was intimate knowledge of her. She felt unarmed, by comparison; disadvantaged. self-exposed vulnerability writing Lorrie Moore
2d2210e The audience-- the book's actual cast-- quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material-- surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality-- had to be reshaped. writing Bret Easton Ellis
8d5ece0 The real Julian Wells didn't die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track. fiction reality writing Bret Easton Ellis
b0ddce2 "Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." writing Bret Easton Ellis
5c6e881 "I stretched out on the bed and slept. It was twilight when I awakened and turned on the light. I felt better, no longer tired. I went to the typewriter and sat before it. My thought was to write a sentence, a single perfect sentence. If I could write one good sentence I could write two and if I could write two I could write three, and if I could write three I could write forever. But suppose I failed? Suppose I had lost all of my beautiful talent? Suppose it had burned up in the fire of Biff Newhouse smashing my nose or Helen Brownell dead forever? What would happen to me? Would I go to Abe Marx and become a busboy again? I had seventeen dollars in my wallet. Seventeen dollars and the fear of writing. I sat erect before the typewriter and blew on my fingers. Please God, please Knut Hamsun, don't desert me now. I started to write and I wrote: "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- Of cabbages--and kings--" I looked at it and wet my lips. It wasn't mine, but what the hell, a man had to start someplace." -- persistence writing John Fante
8bd8c82 If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off. writing John Irving
ab2a1ab I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth. noir-fiction writer writing Cornell Woolrich
304f7f9 As I worked to rebuild the ghost town I had made, I felt keenly that my failure to help Timothy was really only the latest chapter in a lifelong history of inadequacy and powerlessness. writing Michael Chabon
92c0e3e DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work. words writing Peter Ackroyd
47220ec Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childhood though everything had to be shared. If she tried to hold anything back, they would search and find the hidden places. Her written words, discovered, read were just the source of more pain and punishment. This was why she loved poetry. They did not always understand it so they left it alone. memoir poetry writing Bell Hooks
c20fa0a Images are taking over, and writers are a dying breed. The Norman Mailers of today are reduced to writing pun-filled captions for paparazzi photos. Blogs--which were threatening enough to professional writers--are being replaced by video blogs. We writers need to embraced the Second Commandment as our rallying cry for the importance of words. In a literally biblical world, all publications would look like the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or the way it used to look, anyway. page-106 second-commandment writing A.J. Jacobs
81198f5 To tell a story is always to translate the raw material into a specific shape, to select out of the boundless potential facts those that seem salient. writing Rebecca Solnit
7140b46 What crannies of untouched perception can you explore? What autumn was it that moon entered your life? When was it that you picked blueberries at their quintessential moment? How long did you wait for your first true bike? Who were your angels? What are you thinking of? Not thinking of? Writing can give you confidence, can train you to wake up. natalie-goldberg writing Natalie Goldberg
2554d9c ...but it seems to me there is something beyond words--any words--all words--something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it--and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn't have had if you hadn't reached for it. writing L.M. Montgomery
30b6e3e "My novel's about Brooklyn." "The tree? Or the kids or the murderers or the junkies?" Vivaldo swallowed. "All of them." "That's quite an assignment. And if you don't mind my saying so, it sounds just a little bit old fashioned." He put his hand before his mouth and burped. "Brooklyn's been done. And done." writing James Baldwin
15b4e54 "That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action. fiction-writing pulp pulp-fiction writers writing Cornell Woolrich
5776a37 "Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are." ...If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need." memoir natalie-goldberg writing Natalie Goldberg
2c497c1 "I refuse to give readers an uplifting faux experience engineered to comfort them and perpetuate the sociopolitical and economic status quo." "Who died and made you Bertolt Brecht?" humorous writing Chuck Palahniuk
af17bd3 Writers have this schizophrenic ability to both participate in their lives and, at the same time, observe themselves participating in their lives. participating writers writing Edward Albee
b9f5fd4 "Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a vortex" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her "scribbling suit" consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo." creative-process writing writing-life writing-process Louisa May Alcott
db8c931 When I first began to write, I had been a child for most of my life, and my childhood memories were vivid and potent, and the forces that shaped me, Most of them have grown fainter with time, and whenever I write one down, I give it away: it ceases to have the shadowy life of memory and becomes fixed in letters: it ceases to be mine; it loses that mobile unreliability of the live. memory nostalgia writing Rebecca Solnit
c76b899 This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. 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 that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling. traveling walking writing Rebecca Solnit
55f4291 But books don't happen by accident. writing Scott Westerfeld
d1c6c8c "Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth" - I rap my knuckles on the table - "you'll hear oaken solidity, not sawdust and glue." writing David Mitchell
be38aad Hershey is so bent on avoiding cliche that each sentence is as tortured as an American whistleblower. writing David Mitchell
a18cde6 Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog. language reading sound speech writing Marshall McLuhan
a765b3d "Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make it." leadership motivation narrative storytelling writing Walter Isaacson
d2791f1 Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull no one would read them. kidslit manners writing L.M. Montgomery
748ad10 "I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet," scoffed Marilla. "You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse." marilla-cuthbert reading writing L. M. Montgomery
a3bf42b I suppose one has to be desperate, to be a successful writer. One has to reach a rock-bottom at which one can afford to let everything go hang. One has got to damn the public, chance one's living, say what one thinks, and be oneself. Then something may come out. writing T.H. White
fefd39e "Anyway, it's a pretty good story," I said. "You have to admit." "Yeah?" He crumpled up the Kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. "You can have it. I'm giving it to you. After I'm gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours. Put the whole thing in proper chronological order, not like this mishmash I'm making you. Start with the night I was born. March second, 1915. There was a lunar eclipse that night, you know what that is?" "When the earth's shadow falls across the Moon." "Very significant. I'm sure it's a perfect metaphor for something. Start with that." "Kind of trite." I said. He threw the Kleenex at my head. It bounced off my cheek and fell on the floor. I bent to pick it up. Somewhere in its fibers, it held what may have been the last tear my grandfather ever shed. Out of respect for his insistence on the meaninglessness of life--his, everyone's--I threw it into the wastebasket by the door." writing Michael Chabon
fac1ad8 Since language is the only tool with which writers can reflect and shape a culture, it must be transformed into art. Language is not a limitation on the art of literature; it is a glorification. It has been the scaffolding inside which nations and philosophies have been built, and the language of literature has added the ornamental pediment by which the culture is remembered. language legacy literature writers writing E.L. Konigsburg
0500369 I want to read and write and be very quiet. writing Martha Gellhorn
1836504 That economics has a considerable conceptual apparatus with an appropriate terminology can not be a serious ground for complaint. Economic phenomena, ideas, instruments of analysis exist. They require names. Education in economics is, in considerable measure, an introduction to this terminology and to the ideas that it denotes. Anyone who has difficulties with the ideas should complete his education or, following an exceedingly well-beaten path, leave the subject alone. It is sometimes said that the economist has a special obligation to make himself understood because his subject is of such great and popular importance. By this rule the nuclear physicist would have to speak in monosyllables. writing John Kenneth Galbraith
5517c17 "Ayon kay Georges Simenon, ang dahilan daw ng pagsusulat n'ya ay "to exorcise the demon in me." Totoo yon para sa karamihan ng mga manunulat. Ang pagpuksa sa mga personal na demonyo ang nagsilbing makina sa likod ng mga di na mabilang na sanaysay, kwento, at tula. Ang manunulat ay biktima ng isang sumpa na para sa karaniwang tao ay ligo lang ang katapat." pagsusulat writing Bob Ong
13ac237 How to generate writing ideas, things to write about? Whatever's in front of you is a good beginning. Then move out into all streets. You can go anyplace. Tell me everything you know. Don't worry if what you know you can't prove or haven't studied. knowledge writing Natalie Goldberg
c1fac72 We're always thinking we should be writing no matter what else we might be doing. It's not fun. The life of an artist isn't easy. You're never free unless you are doing your art. inspirational writing Natalie Goldberg
6c5f324 The responsibility of literatuure is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander. writing Natalie Goldberg
7fd8cd7 It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents and collect an allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at least, accept it. writing writing-advice Natalie Goldberg
08593f3 How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them? writing Ray Bradbury
ee81e1a "I think "taste" is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves." taste writing John Updike
e92ed31 When I was a boy, Ray Bradbury picked stories from his books of short stories he thought younger readers might like and published them as R Is for Rocket and S Is for Space. Now I was doing the same sort of thing, and I asked Ray if he'd mind if I called this book M Is for Magic. (He didn't.) M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises... ray-bradbury stories writing Neil Gaiman
a5b1b38 Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass. grammar montana rules-of-english-language writing Robert M. Pirsig
d1404fe One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines. oscar-wilde shakespeare writing Peter Ackroyd
32d8b54 Li i libri erano ammassati dappertutto. Non erano solo sugli scaffali come nelle altre case, no: da loro erano accatastati sotto i tavoli, sulle sedie, negli angoli piu remoti. Ce n'erano in cucina e in bagno, sul televisore e nell'armadio; pile basse e pile alte. Grossi, piccoli, vecchi, nuovi... libri e ancora libri. Accoglievano Meggie sulla tavola apparecchiata per la colazione, invitanti; l'aiutavano a scacciare la noia... e qualche volta la mandavano lunga distesa per terra! writing Cornelia Funke
8d0063a There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go, thinking vaguely that it will always be given to us to try again. Thus works of art, and thus whole lives of men, are spoilt by blinking and moving quickly on. I often found that I had ideas for stories, but by the time I had thought them out in detail they seemed to me hardly worth writing, as if I had already 'done' them: not because they were bad, but because they already belonged to the past and I had lost interest. My thoughts were soon stale to me. Some things I ruined by starting them too soon. Others by thinking them so intensely in my head that they were over before they began. Projects would change in a second from hazy uncommitted dreams into unsalvageable ancient history. Whole novels existed only in their titles. creative-process crucial-moment elusive inspiration iris-murdoch the-black-prince writer writing Iris Murdoch
4753e09 I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a , now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art. iris-murdoch meta plot struggling the-black-prince writer writing Iris Murdoch
ce352d1 One of the problems of being a storyteller is the cultivated ability to extrapolate; in every situation all the come to me. imagination storytelling what-ifs writers writing Madeleine L'Engle
8e9a29e By the time these stories were written, six decades had passed since the crucifixion. In that time, the evangelists had heard just about every conceivable objection to the resurrection, and they were able to create narratives to counter each and every one of them. resurrection writing Reza Aslan
e41a1b8 I had come to the conclusion - based on experience - that the only real way of learning to write a novel was probably to write a novel. on-writing writing Diana Gabaldon
6857729 There's a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
207d343 Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids sex writing Diana Gabaldon
fd7bb52 "It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children." constitution first-amendment free-speech freedom-of-the-press literary-freedom literature writers writing Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
76e3508 "He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial eagle.' Taking down the dictation, Theodora [his secretary] felt it to be almost more than she could bear. 'It is a heart-breaking thing to do, though, there is the extraordinary fact that his mind retain the power to frame perfectly characteristic sentences." creativity death delirium hallucination imagination language novel-writing novelists sentence-structure syntax writing Fred Kaplan
95906b4 I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn't I look forward to yours. obsession past writing Wallace Stegner
5889cab If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers. writers writing Barbara W. Tuchman
65c2ace "In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology: This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writing--under the name Matt Lowe--for John Middleton Murry's Adelphi. As he told his diary: economics edward-said george-orwell politics poverty tautology writing Christopher Hitchens
2d1ed3d "Tell me something wonderful," he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep." "You're always writing one of your plays on the phone," said Dane. "I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime." "It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea." "Ah," said Harry." dreams like-life lorrie-moore love loved plays reality sloppy springtime wet writing Lorrie Moore
6ef74cc We like to take credit when we get a new idea, as if we originated the idea in our brain, but what we actually did was no less extraordinary: we channeled the idea. creative ideas inspiration life new-ideas read reading writing Chris Prentiss
f89d15d Dimenticano che la vita non e qui. Altre leggi, nero su bianco, vigono qui. Un batter d'occhio durera quanto dico io, si lascera dividere in piccole eternita piene di pallottole fermate in volo. Non una cosa avverra qui se non voglio. Senza il mio assenso non cadra foglia, ne si pieghera stelo sotto il punto del piccolo zoccolo. C'e dunque un mondo di cui reggo le sorti indipendenti? Un tempo che lego con catene di segni? Un esistere a mio comando incessante? La gioia di scrivere. Il potere di perpetuare. La vendetta d'una mano mortale. writing Wisława Szymborska
b36fe20 "I feel like the secretary to the morning whose only/ responsibility is to take down its bright, airy dictation/ mundane poetry small-joys writing Billy Collins
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