#writ

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#craft #fiction #reading #writing #art

What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#narration #architecture

I have been playing a lot of keyboards, especially in the last five or six years. I suppose it gives you more scope than the guitar, although it does tend to make you write a different way. ↗

— Mick Ralphs

#been #different #different way #does #especially

To have output you must have input. It helps to go on a period of creative nourishment, or dolce far niente, clearing the brain. Go to bed with the cat, some flouffy pillows, tea and a book which could not in any sense be called improving. Read for fun for a change: superior Chicklit is good, or children’s classics. You are not allowed to try and analyse what the author is doing. After a good sleep, go and do something new, or that you haven’t done for a while.... ↗

— Lucy Sussex

#change

This is the way I want to die. Torn apart by angry fans who want me to play a different song. ↗

— Regina Spektor

#fans #funny #humor #songwriter #death

Every time your work is read, you die several deaths for every word, and poetry is like being flayed alive. ↗

— Mary Stewart

#writing #death

Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling. ↗

— William Faulkner

#hardship #the-art-of-the-novel #writing #art

I said never mix business with pleasure. They said it was a pleasure doing business with me. ↗

— Nikhil Sharda

#humourous #puns #satire-write #business

For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph -- and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting. ↗

— Leigh Michaels

#romance-novels #writing #love

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it ↗

— Roald Dahl

#freedom