...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

WhiskeyScotch

“it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

― Ernest Hemingway

WhiskeyScotch

“The desire to write grows with writing.”

― Erasmus

seribulan

“I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.”
—Richard Ben Cramer

seribulan

“I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.”
—Richard Ben Cramer

WhiskeyScotch

“Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.”

― Lili St. Crow

WhiskeyScotch

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."

― Susan Sontag

WhiskeyScotch

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”

― Robert Cormier

WhiskeyScotch

“I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.
But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.”

― Stephen Fry

WhiskeyScotch

“I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up. And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring.”

― Alysha Speer

WhiskeyScotch

“The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity.”

― Bill Watterson

WhiskeyScotch

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”

― Robert McKee

WhiskeyScotch

“The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.”

― Iain M. Banks

WhiskeyScotch

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”

― Elie Wiesel

WhiskeyScotch

“A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.”

― Garrison Keillor

seribulan

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”
—Allegra Goodman

WhiskeyScotch

“If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”

― John Steinbeck

WhiskeyScotch

“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

― Octavia E. Butler

WhiskeyScotch

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

― Stephen King

WhiskeyScotch

“The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.”

― Italo Calvino

WhiskeyScotch

“Writing is a delicious agony.”

― Gwendolyn Brooks