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

bianglala

I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

CLARICE LISPECTOR

bianglala

Rewriting and editing are just as important as writing. The first draft is the rough outline of a sculpture. The next five or six or seven are the refining of that sculpture.

JOHN van de RUIT

bianglala

Writing is about making choices. You have a choice on every page. Every sentence counts. If in doubt, go with your gut.

JOHN van de RUIT

bianglala

People who like to write literature usually concentrate on the uplifting and dynamic aspects of life and neglect those that are placid and static, though the latter is the ground of the former. That is, they concentrate for the most part on struggle and neglect the harmonious aspects of life. In reality, people only engage in struggle in order to attain harmony.

EILEEN CHANG

bianglala

The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage.

WILL SELF

bianglala

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.

WILL SELF

bianglala

Read A LOT. Read and read and read and read! Think about what books you like best and try to figure out what it is about the writing that works for you. Then give it a go. Think about what books you hated and try to figure out why the writing was such a disaster. Don’t write like that.

JUSTINE LARBALESTIER

bianglala

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I’m not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.

CHINA MIEVILLE

bianglala

Some of the best literature of the last hundred years has come out of the genre tradition and of course the best of it challenges expectations, just as the best of literary fiction challenges those expectations.

CHINA MIEVILLE

bianglala

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

seribulan

“You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.” — John Rogers

bianglala

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything.

ANDRE DUBUS III

bianglala

The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don’t write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.

STANISLAW LEM

bianglala

The process of writing is why I write. You know, it’s the typical quote of ‘The journey is the destination’, so the actual writing of the sentences and the playing with the language and the creating of the characters is why I do it.

ALICE SEBOLD

bianglala

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.

MICHAEL OONDATJE

bianglala

Writing about feeling disconnected has enabled me to connect, and that has been the most lovely thing of all.

MARIAN KEYES

bianglala

I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

WILLIAM SAROYAN

bianglala

The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it.

WILLIAM SAROYAN

bianglala

When we read fiction, we want to get outside of ourselves and are able to see from a perspective we haven’t seen through before. That can be very powerful.

G.WILLOW WILSON

bianglala

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

GARY PROVOST