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

bianglala

"Speech is the body part of thinking, the voice of the mind. Writing is the blood and mind mixing to speak through the fingers, through the hands."

LENORA CHAMPAGNE

bianglala

"There's a lot of beauty to be found in sadness and melancholia. One of the things that you find time and time again - not just with music, but with literature - is that things that appear to be quite depressing on the surface can ironically be very uplifting and touching to other people. When you hear something that really reminds you that you're not alone in feeling sad, depressed, melancholic, angry - I think that can actually be a very cathartic experience."

STEVEN JOHN WILSON

bianglala

"Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it."

KENNETH PATCHEN

bianglala

"There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone."

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

seribulan

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.” — Terry Pratchett

shaxa

mualian

We read to know that we are not alone.

mualian

Sleep is good he said, and books are better..

mualian

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

mualian

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

chesfa

bianglala

"When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you."

CONNIE WILLIS

bianglala

"A lot of teenagers write to me and say "I want to write a book. I want to get published." And those are two very different things.

For the first one, that you want to write a book, I think is an excellent idea and you should totally do that because teenagers who want to write, you should be writing. You should be writing all the time like a maniac.

Don't worry about the second bit, just yet because A. You need a lot of practice. You need to do it for, I'm not kidding, years. And then once you are published, it's a business. It's a job.

Plus, every author I know was that teenager who sat in their room and read and wrote. That's who becomes an author, but that's what you have to do for a while before you become an author."

MAUREEN JOHNSON

bianglala

"My ideas are a shapeless mass that my writing molds into beauty."

ROB BIGNELL

bianglala

"A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage."

JONATHAN CARROLL

bianglala

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company."

ANDRE GIDE

seribulan

Write about what makes you different.” — Sandra Cisneros

seribulan

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. —Abraham Lincoln

bianglala

"To write a novel, you must first understand at a physical level how one is put together...It is especially important to plow through as many novels as you can while you are still young. Everything you can get your hands on—great novels, not-so-great novels, crappy novels, it doesn’t matter (at all!) as long as you keep reading."

HARUKI MURAKAMI

bianglala

“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”

KURT VONNEGUT