#act

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books. ↗

— Simon Armitage

#always #appears #been #between #books

Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn't see journalism as "morally indefensible" was either "too stupid" or "too full of himself," she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I'd never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism - particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures - was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren't talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone. ↗

— Michael Hastings

#transactional-relationships #art

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot... ↗

— John Gardner

#plot #setting #story #writer #writing

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#character-building #emotions #intellect #music #poetry

Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#distraction #resistance #art

Beware. Those with the least amount of authority exercise it the most often. ↗

— Peggy Kopman-Owens

#adventure #mystery #suspense #travel #art

Legacy is not what's left tomorrow when you're gone. It's what you give, create, impact and contribute today while you're here that then happens to live on. ↗

— Rasheed Ogunlaru

#courage #destiny #fate-happiness #following-your-life-s-path #inspiring-quotes

Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space ↗

— Jackson Pollock

#art

Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#interaction #literature #reading #art

On Writing About Nora Hawks I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women. ↗

— Dennis R. Miller

#female-characters #how-to-write #nora-hawks #on-writing #art