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

WhiskeyScotch

“A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.”

― Tom Bissell

WhiskeyScotch

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

― Robert Hass

WhiskeyScotch

“Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.”

― Maya Angelou

WhiskeyScotch

“Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.”

― Isabel Allende

WhiskeyScotch

“If a story is in you, it has to come out.”

― William Faulkner

seribulan

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
—George Orwell

WhiskeyScotch

“And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.”

― Paul Auster

WhiskeyScotch

“Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.”

― Gilles Deleuze

WhiskeyScotch

“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.”

― Walter Mosley

WhiskeyScotch

“The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the 'normal', the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.”

― Harlan Ellison

WhiskeyScotch

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer.”

― Jean M. Auel

WhiskeyScotch

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.”

― H.G. Wells

WhiskeyScotch

“I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.”

― Françoise Sagan

WhiskeyScotch

“They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.”

― James Franco

WhiskeyScotch

“If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.”

― Giacomo Casanova

WhiskeyScotch

“You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”

― Orson Scott Card

seribulan

“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.”
—May Sarton

WhiskeyScotch

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

― Ernest Hemingway

WhiskeyScotch

“I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.”

― Rob Thurman

WhiskeyScotch

“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.”

― Vladimir Nabokov