#books

The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to disappointments because it gives a heightened concept of living, it leaves out the dull or stagnant moments. You, in your books, also have a heightened rhythm, and a sequence of events so packed with excitement that I expected all your life to be delirious, intoxicated." Literature is an exaggeration, a dramatization, and those who are nourished on it (as I was) are in great danger of trying to approximate an impossible rhythm. Trying to live up to Dostoevskian scenes every day. And between writers there is a straining after extravagance. We incite each other to jazz-up our rhythm. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#writing #life

Pose your questions to people and you will get countless useless answers. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #countless #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes

We measure everything by ourselves with almost a necessary conceit. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#conceit #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #measure

Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#deep-thoughts #dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #inner #light #lights #literature

There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata; there is a thunder note in an angry sky. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #moon #moonlight

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#good-books #great-writing #reading #writing-books

Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands like that in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#creativity #writers #writing #writers-block

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth? ↗

— John Waters

#writing-books