Writing Quotes - Page 108

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Liked" was the kiss of death. "Loved" or "hated" interested him. At least the performer had aroused emotion.

We are told that in translation there is no such thing as equivalence. Many times the translator reaches a fork in the translating road where they must make a choice in the interpretation of a word. And each time they make one of these choices, they are taken further from the truth. But what we aren’t told is that this isn’t a shortcoming of translation; it’s a shortcoming of language itself. As soon as we try to put reality into words, we limit it. Words are not reality, they are the cause of reality, and thus reality is always more. Writers aren't alchemists who transmute words into the aurous essence of the human experience. No, they are glassmakers. They create a work of art that enables us to see inside to help us understand. And if they are really good, we can see our own reflections staring back at us.

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

The true poem rests between the words.

If you only enjoy the journey of writing, that's reward enough.

I enjoy writing alone, naked and unbothered.

Can I speak to Sayvyer, please?”“You’re looking for the savior? At 1:15 a.m.?”“No. her name’s Sayvyer.”“There’s no savior here. Especially not at 1:15 a.m.

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

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.

If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

The first thing I ever learned in roller derby is to fall, and in the author world I believe that same rule applies.

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous vapidity that compromises fiction's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to reside.

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

Over-mastered by some thoughts, I yeelded an inckie tribute unto them.

I read to learn from the greats but I write to compete with them.

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

If the voices in your head make you cry, you're a lunatic. Put their words on paper, and you're a writer.

The joy of writing.The power of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand.

I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else.

I write because I'm free,because I can,because I will. I write because I must,because I'm breathing,because I'd go crazy otherwise,because it's who I am.I write to make a statement,to share my thoughts,to discover myself,to express my ideas.But most of all, I write for future generations.I write for love. I write to inspire.I write to encourage. I write for me.

Only write if you can't not.

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!

My friend says she's smart. She reads a book to fall asleep.

Poems are never finished - just abandoned

Attributing to another author, "Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

The pen is mightier than the sword!

Seperti apakah Anda? Menurut saya, paling tidak Anda adalah apa yang Anda tulis.

Secondly, you can spend your whole life being a story that happens to somebody else. You can twist and cram and shave down every aspect of your personality that doesn’t quite fit into the story boys have grown up expecting, but eventually, one day, you’ll wake up and want something else, and you’ll have to choose. Because the other thing about stories is that they end. The book closes, and you’re left with yourself, a grown fucking woman with no more pieces of cultural detritus from which to construct a personality. I tried and failed to be a character in a story somebody else had written for me. What concerns me now is the creation of new narratives, the opening of space in the collective imagination for women who have not been permitted such space before, for women who don’t exist to please, to delight, to attract men, for women who have more on our minds. Writing is a different kind of magic, and everyone knows what happens to women who do their own magic - but it’s a risk you have to take.

If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work. The people of Darfur need to go home now. I write this for them, and for that day, ... and for those still living who might yet have beautiful lives on the earth.

Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the drama—that time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossible to bring forward events without touching on their causes; and that any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expence of thought.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

We love our mother because she cares and also because she cooks.

In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of Hell. This road of darkness lies to the West, according to Native American myth, and each of us must travel it at some point in our lives. The western road is one of trials, ordeals, disasters and abrupt life changes — yet a road to be honored, nevertheless, as the road on which wisdom is gained. James Hillman, whose theory of 'archetypal psychology' draws extensively on Greco–Roman myth, echoes this belief when he argues that darkness is vital at certain periods of life, questioning our modern tendency to equate mental health with happiness. It is in the Underworld, he reminds us, that seeds germinate and prepare for spring. Myths of descent and rebirth connect the soul's cycles to those of nature.

i just know no one is a friend like writing .

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying.

For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible...

Writers are highly resistant to reality. Just as well or the human condition would go undocumented.

For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.

Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart.

It is a sobering thought that each of us gives his hearers and his readers a chance to look into the inner working of his mind when he speaks or writes.

A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.

I'm obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I'm really any good at is telling you how I feel.

Writing is like painting. You sketch it, add colour, add depth and detail. You give it a final layer and then hang it proudly.

My essay had evolved into thinking about fucking. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin. I was writing about fucking by a master and fucking as a slave, about Hegel, the comfort women and teenage porno stars. Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky could fail me, I didn’t care. I’d pass just with the bibliography. I was compiling a list of every single book I’d read or that I wanted to read that was about power and sex. High school should have a whole fucking course on just this. I was helping the school make curriculum…I was writing my essay, writing easily now. I didn’t have a reader anymore like Lee or Chris but I imagined that I was writing for them both. Maybe I was writing for anyone who could fucking stand me.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.

Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done.

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRODI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

Language is very tough, though, a tenacity that is backed up by a long history. However it is treated, its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, even if that treatment is rather rough. It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.