#rites

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention. ↗

— Jennifer Weiner

#attention #beach #book #capital #considers

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#certain #experiment #favorites #go #i

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#attachment #concerned #even #fiction #fiction writer

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#about #cannot #choose #live #make

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. ↗

— Marge Piercy

#being #better #cure #fact #fire

In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual. ↗

— William Robertson Smith

#common #dictate #foreign #individual #magical

Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing? ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#another #ceiling #could #cross #down

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. ↗

— Martin Luther

#also #bible #clouds #flowers #god

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays. ↗

— Gerry Mulligan

#miles #miles davis #plays #songs #who

And it really is a good feeling to get up there and make that sound. I'm not stuck in a time warp, because I can use as many of the old songs as I want to, just the favorites. ↗

— Dan Hicks

#favorites #feeling #get #good #good feeling