#writ

Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more. ↗

— Laini Taylor

#writing #religion

When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw on these limited resources like spend thrifts such resemblances will be inevitable--and therefore not significant. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#social-world #storytelling #writers #art

نحن لا يمكن أن نجبر فناناً على أن يعمل بخلاف ما تمليه عليه طبيعته وإلا كنا نجبره على التصنع والتكلف، وهذا شر لا يمكن أن يؤذي الأدب والفن، والمسألة في غاية البساطة مع ذلك، فإذا كنا نتيح للفنان حريته كاملة، فنحن أيضاً أحرار في تقييمنا للأعمال الفنية، فلا نمنح تقديرنا إلا لمن يقدم لنا العمل الفني الكامل، وهو العمل الفني الرفيع فنياً النافع إنسانياً واجتماعياً ↗

— توفيق الحكيم

#artist #books #criticism #critics #writer

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself). ↗

— Roland Barthes

#writing #science

Anything designed to be inoffensive isn't worth your time -- life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death. ↗

— Holly Lisle

#life #offense #writing #death

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored. ↗

— Paul Di Filippo

#writing #science

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#writing #science

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak..surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#writing #teacher

It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#writing #art

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us? ↗

— Cornelia Funke

#character #cornelia-funke #existentialism #words #writers