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

bianglala

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

CHARLES BAXTER

bianglala

Literature is not an instruction manual.

CHARLES BAXTER

bianglala

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty … like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

DAPHNE DU MAURIER

bianglala

Writing is an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.

STANLEY ELKIN

bianglala

A tight structural form opens possibilities. Take a pattern, an established model or sub-genre, and write to it. In writing, limitation gives freedom

W. G SEBALD

bianglala

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent. It also needs amazing will. Your role as teacher is to nurture and protect your students while, at the same time, forcing them beyond their limits, encouraging them to see the world, to imagine every action in the moment, to see the body as part of dialogue, and basically to write as if their life depended on it.

PETER CAREY

bianglala

Literature, after all, from Homer onwards, is littered with the recounting of deaths and with the fascination for death, and in this it only expresses what we all repeatedly dwell on but do not necessarily or readily voice. So far as death goes, I don’t claim any oddity. There is only one sea: I’m in the same boat as everyone else. And that seems, more generally, to be the position that every novelist, unless they are possessed of a peculiar arrogance, should take: I am mortal too, I am human too. I too, like you, share life’s joys, pains, confusions. We’re all in the same boat.

GRAHAM SWIFT

bianglala

Read a lot. And I mean a lot. And read widely. It is vital that you get a sense of the variety of writing styles there is out there. As you read, ask yourself how you are responding to what’s on the page in front of you. Are you compelled to read on, past the point which you had anticipated? If so, try to understand what aspects of plot and style have forced you to read on.

SIMON SCARROW

nurhumayra

Keep reading....it's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have

- Loyd Alexander

nurhumayra

Some books you read
some books you enjoy
but some books just swallow you up, heart and soul

- Joanne Harris

nurhumayra

Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do,
so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell

- Charles de Lint

seribulan

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are- Mason Cooley

bianglala

“Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself.”

REBECCA MEAD

bianglala

“Voracious reading was like an anesthesia, numbing me to the harsh life around me.”

MARK MATHABANE

bianglala

Literature is the question minus the answer.

ROLAND BARTHES

bianglala

Take the gesture, the action of writing. I would say, for example, that I have an almost obsessive relation to writing instruments. I often switch from one pen to another just for the pleasure of it. I try out new ones. I have far too many pens – I don’t know what to do with all of them! And yet, as soon as I see a new one, I start craving it. I cannot keep myself from buying them.

ROLAND BARTHES

bianglala

All writers are different. Some began writing when they were children. Some write every day, others when they have time, or when they feel like it. Some plan meticulously, others never plan anything.

CELIA REES

bianglala

Whenever you think you’re writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it’ll be commercial, you’re doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we’re reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

TERENCE MCNALLY

bianglala

Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.

ROY BLOUNT Jr.

bianglala

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

TAIYE SELASI