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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
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
6796e62 Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it. ego writers writing Zia Haider Rahman
d3399a6 No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. writing Joseph Conrad
1d0e07e Yet entertainment--as I define it, pleasure and all--remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, and the universal hunger for connection. entertainment writing Michael Chabon
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
288ca02 We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice. writing Colum McCann
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
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
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
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
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
573254d The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge. literature quest writing Thomas C. Foster
e97210b Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or she is a part. When I write I can imagine a child in California wishing to give away what he's just seen- a wild animal fleeing though creosote cover in the desert, casting a bright-eyed backward glance or three lines of overheard conversation that seem to contain everything we need understand to repair the gaping rift between body and soul. I look back at that boy turning in glee beneath his pigeons and know it can take a lifetime to convey what you mean, to find the opening. You watch, you set it down. Then you try again. stories writing Barry Lopez
c3c5ff7 The hospital bulked darkly in the darkness. darkness form writing William T. Vollmann
6263174 God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think; writing Iain Pears
66f0afd The disadvantages and dangers of the author's calling are offset by an advantage so great as to make all its difficulties, disappointments, and maybe hardships, unimportant...Nothing befalls him that he cannot transmute into a stanza, a song, or a story, and having done this, be rid of it. The artist is the only free man. writing W. Somerset Maugham
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
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
e134e1f An ancient writer says of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying it. rhetoric writing Edith Hamilton
f3bd5c2 None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have been very good writers. He should know, moreover, that at least for a few great men ambiguity of expression has been a positive asset. But with these exceptions he may safely conclude that what is wholly mysterious in economics is not likely to be important. writing John Kenneth Galbraith
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
be22dbc Slater used to be a poet, he's nothing now, and he sort of looks on Robby and me with awe because we aren't nothing yet, we haven't given up yet, awed at me because I'm thirty-one and haven't given up yet, and at Robby because he's young and has potential. Most people stop wanting to be a writer around the age of sixteen. writing Rick Bass
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
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
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
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
68cc804 THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. practice unit writing Natalie Goldberg
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
23104f4 In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us. literature tameness wildness writing Henry David Thoreau
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
6b5d763 The quiet lines matter as much as the noisy ones. writing Colum McCann
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
c720075 For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar. writers writing Richard Ford
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
2384198 The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell. artist write writing Steven Pressfield
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
d7a5063 You wrote something easily in youth, and later you came to see how difficult it all was. writing youth A.S. Byatt
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
5b3c02c A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious. writing Terry Tempest Williams
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
b5cd4b9 The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream. dreams honesty truth writing Jane Yolen
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
b7403f0 We shared ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership. ideas sweaters writing Ann Patchett
8e1aefa Unless we remember we cannot understand. understanding writing E.M. Forster
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
f9f7e96 Sometimes it's beautiful and we fall in love with all that story. Even after a thousand pages we don't want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make-believe people who live there. You wouldn't leave after two thousand pages, if there were two thousand. The Rings trilogy of J.R.R.Tolkien is a perfect example of this. A thousand pages of hobbits hasn't been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the questing rabbits of Watership Down, and half a hundred others. The writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them. hobbits lotr tolkien writing Stephen King
ad1ffbf If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity - perhaps the ultimate form of control. journalism perspective writing Joseph J. Ellis
e5891b3 I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin: My birthplace, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grow (that my father may have planted the day I was born), the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories... My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognising them... Space melts like sand running through one's fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless shreds: To write: To try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs. memory mortality space time writing Georges Perec
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
7b24c32 I can arrange words on a page but I can't seem to organize books on a shelf. Over the years, My Secret has shelved thousands and thousands, held each one in his hands. He thinks they might have seeped into him, through his skin, as much as the books he's read. At night and on his days off we spend hours talking about writing. He reads three or four books at a time. When he's not working at the bookstore he goes to other bookstores around the city and browses until closing time. Holding more volumes in his hands, filling himself up with words. book-sellers books francesca-lia-block the-thorn-necklace words writing Francesca Lia Block
82b12b2 Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent. history propaganda writing W.E.B. Du Bois
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
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
c89c09e [T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid it. The heart of the craft lies there. writing Jhumpa Lahiri
63af7ee "How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist." writing writing-process Tracy Kidder
c6843d8 His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people? writing Alexander McCall Smith
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
b1e65ec Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. literature reading words writing Anne Lamott
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
3b707a4 I lost my voice, but I had words. words writer writing Roxane Gay
e9fa27b Often in literary criticism, writers are told that a character isn't likable, as if a character's likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel's writing. likeability writing Roxane Gay
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
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
2dab91a "But we were chumps and we knew it. As makers of sentences we were practically fetal, beneath notice, unlaunched, fooling around in our spare time or on somebody else's dime. Nobody loved our sentences as we loved them, and so they congealed or grew sour on our tongues. We barely glanced at our wall-scribblings for fear of what a few weeks or even hours might expose in our infatuations. Our photocopied fortune slips we'd find in muddy clogs in storm drains, tangled with advertising flyers, unheeded. Our manuscripts? Those were unspeakable secrets, kept not only from the world but from each other. writing Jonathan Lethem
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
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
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
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
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.
d2791f1 Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull no one would read them. kidslit manners writing L.M. Montgomery
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
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
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
65d4f15 "An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world artists emotion growth life revelation spirituality writers writing James Baldwin
feae4ac "One journalist complemented another that his article on a dispute, "had made both sides see themselves as they are." communication objectivity writing Doris Kearns Goodwin
db4bb16 Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power? human-interest writing Doris Kearns Goodwin
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
d3aad0c A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul. writing Jane Yolen
40aa0c2 We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves. self-discovery writers writers-on-writing writing Jane Yolen
8dee5b1 "I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up." -- writing Jane Yolen
1ae5db9 [Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so. storytelling writing Samuel Beckett
f60da6c Shigure: G'morning. Tohru: Good morning! Yuki: Um, Shigure, it's . Why don't you get a sleep pattern? Shigure: I became an author so I wouldn't have to. writing writing-life Natsuki Takaya
3d8a434 And if minor characters show an inclination to become major characters ... you at least give them a shot at it, because ... just as in the real world it may take you many years to find out that the stranger you talked to once for half an hour in the railroad station may have done more to point you to where your true homeland lies than your priest or your best friend or even your psychiatrist. writing Anne Lamott
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