#process

The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?" And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra! ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#confluence #creative-process #ideas #writing #writing-process

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#craft #craftsmanship #creative-process #crudeness #culture

A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#art

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions. ↗

— Michelle M. Pillow

#character #fantasy #fiction #michelle-pillow #romance-novel

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind." (Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886) ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#detail #nature #show-don-t-tell #writing #life

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home. ↗

— Robert Neelly Bellah

#child #children #frightening #home #however

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. ↗

— Marcel Duchamp

#art #creative-process #creativity #art

You shouldn't have to sue somebody to get justice. It ought to come through administrative process. ↗

— Birch Bayh

#come #get #justice #ought #process

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top. ↗

— Joyce Brothers

#getting #healthy #inevitable #interested #learn

The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous. ↗

— Paul Rand

#design #process #art