#writ

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#art

Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#space #time #writing #art

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus. ↗

— John Gardner

#writing #art

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#feminism #writing #art

While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#artists #arts-and-humanities #books #classics #creativity

The artist works by locating the world in himself ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#process #writing #art

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#creativity #envy #writing #art

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprose. ↗

— Eugen Herrigel

#porup #writing #zen #art

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#literature-writing #philosophy #art

I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#writing #art