#tin

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#life

Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#thought-experiments #writing-craft #experience

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer--such as it is--is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience. Writers read literary biography, and surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#experience

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie. ↗

— David Mamet

#eating #food #humor #pie #stress

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. ↗

— Robert Hughes

#writing-advice #writing-life #life

After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is. ↗

— Criss Jami

#actions-over-words #boasting #bragging #cheap #cheapness

Tell me this--if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life--if you knew you'd never have a line published--would you still go on writing--would you?' 'Of course I would,' said Emily disdainfully. 'Why, I have to write--I can't help it at times--I've just got to. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#life

If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn't fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy Fieri, it is On Like Donkey Kong: swing the rope, jump the barrel, and save the princess. ↗

— Sarah Wendell

#romance #writing #life

In his experience with women, it was difficult to recover once things began to go wrong--once they had unreasonably decided that you were a person with whom they were not under any circumstances ever going to have sex. ↗

— John Lanchester

#men #relationships #sex #women #dating

Taggle, meanwhile, made himself popular, killing rats and bringing a rabbit into camp every evening, preening in the praise - silently, thank god, though at night, he recounted choice bits to Kate: "Rye Baro says I am a princeling; he split the leg bone for me so that I could eat the marrow. They love me. And I'm sure they'll keep you, too." Mira, she thought, and treasured it each time she heard it, They must keep me. Family. ↗

— Erin Bow

#belonging #boasting #hope #longing #talking-animals