#ok

Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: "Ports have names they call the sea." Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use -- high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject -- there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical. ↗

— Richard Rodriguez

#writing #life

I sometimes think heaven is walking out into the sunshine with the day ahead of me and no idea what would happen. I'd probably spend most of it in the library, so I guess it don't matter if the sun shines or not. ↗

— Clare O'Donohue

#happiness #life

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto... I say, don't read the classics -- try to discover your own classics; every life has its own. ↗

— Rudolf Flesch

#inspirational #reading #experience

Getting all emotionally wrapped up in made-up people's lives gives me a chance to take a break from my own life [...]. ↗

— Arlaina Tibensky

#books #characters #emotions #reading #life

Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It's harsh and sometimes gritty, but it's real. Why should we tip toe around that? ↗

— Shandy L. Kurth

#banned-books #controversy #reading #writing #life

The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#life

I'm sixteen with what I hope will be a long life ahead, but I'm willing to give it up, to give anything to let her live, to let her make it through the night. ↗

— Travis Thrasher

#christian-fiction #good-reads #horror #redemption #solitary

Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#looking-forward #moving-forward #past-and-present #life

People who make snide comments to authors like "anyone can write a book" or "well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can't be that hard" or poke at a book because it's "romance" or "genre fiction" and act like that somehow makes it substandard because they don't read it... well, ok, go ahead. Write a bestseller. Don't forget to go through the correct edit process. We'll wait. ↗

— Michelle M. Pillow

#author #book #book-writing #edit #genre-fiction

Human sympathy has its limits. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#f-scott-fitzgerald #quotes-to-define-my-life #the-great-gatsby #life