#writ

If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write. ↗

— J. B. Priestley

#challenge #desk #face #genius #go

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - You write backward Es! ↗

— Hilary Putnam

#backward #formulas #i #i think #logic

Work. Don't Think. Relax. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#relaxation #writing #inspirational

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment. ↗

— Pliny the Elder

#another #authors #comparing #discovered #former

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination. ↗

— Ishmael Reed

#imagination #labor #manual #manual labor #poetry

...required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way. ↗

— Ted Conover

#new-journalism #on-fiction #storytelling #writing #change

The best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one – everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made – some even say that is how Nature created her species. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#creativity #literature #novels #writers #writing

Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter in Russian. ↗

— David Remnick

#complex #constant #enough #everything #happy

Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him. ↗

— Cardinal Richelieu

#find #give #give me #hang #him

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story. ↗

— Pam Houston

#story #themes #unexpected #writing #life