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

bianglala

“Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES

bianglala

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES

bianglala

'I was a shy girl, but when I read, I was adventurous. Books made me bolder.'

ROXANE GAY

bianglala

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading."

DAVID BAILEY

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“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”
—Steve Almond, WD

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“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
—Stephen King

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“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”
—Jack Kerouac, WD

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“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
—Hunter S. Thompson

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“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
—George Orwell

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“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
—Ernest Hemingway

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“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.”
—Peter Handke

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“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
—Samuel Johnson

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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

bianglala

“For readers, one of life’s most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers—not just capable of doing it (which Morris already knew), but in love with it. Hopelessly. Head over heels. The first book that does that is never forgotten, and each page seems to bring a fresh revelation, one that burns and exalts: Yes! That’s how it is! Yes! I saw that, too! And, of course, That’s what I think! That’s what I FEEL!”

STEPHEN KING, FINDERS KEEPERS

bianglala

“A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees.”

STEPHEN KING, FINDERS KEEPERS

seribulan

    I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

    –Neil Gaiman

bianglala

"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

bianglala

"I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am."

JANE AUSTEN

bianglala

"Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it.Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

STEVEN PRESSFIELD

bianglala

To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.

A.C GRAYLING