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

LelaRentaka7

“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”
― Roald Dahl

LelaRentaka7

“As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.”
― Paul Rudnick

LelaRentaka7

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
― Italo Calvino

LelaRentaka7

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”
― Alexander Trocchi

LelaRentaka7

“You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”
― Jessica Mitford

LelaRentaka7

“You don’t make art out of good intentions.”
― Gustave Flaubert

LelaRentaka7

“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.”
― China Miéville

LelaRentaka7

“What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.”
― Thomas Wolfe

LelaRentaka7

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
― Robert Benchley

LelaRentaka7

“The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.”
― Fran Lebowitz

LelaRentaka7

“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold

LelaRentaka7

“People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

LelaRentaka7

“To become successful, one must put themselves in the paths of giants!”
― Lillian Cauldwell

LelaRentaka7

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”
― Ernest Hemingway

LelaRentaka7

“Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.”
― André Breton

LelaRentaka7

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.”
― William Faulkner

LelaRentaka7

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”
― Mark Twain

LelaRentaka7

“People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.”
― John Gardner

LelaRentaka7

“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”
― Terry Pratchett

LelaRentaka7

“[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!”
― Terry Pratchett