#writ

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#exageration #language #on-writing #power-of-words #superlatives

It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice. ↗

— Kristen Lamb

#publishing #wana #we-are-not-alone #writers #writing

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? ↗

— Annie Dillard

#reading #understanding #writing #writing-life #beauty

But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#courage

Personal accounts flow from the heart and tend to be the most difficult to write. It's nearly impossible to remove the emotional undertones, and it takes so much courage to open those pages to everyone else. ↗

— Javier A. Robayo

#courage

Listen to Me is blood on paper, souls on the page. What courage these young writers have, what generosity. Once again, the girls of WriteGirl challenge us to step into our voices with confidence and grace, and to sing. ↗

— Sara Fain

#creative-writing #writegirl #courage

Nobody ever talks about the pyramids that weren't built, the books that weren't written, the songs that weren't sung. Stop letting your fear condemn you to mediocrity. Get out of your own way. Your dreams are a poetic reflection of your soul's wishes. Be courageous enough to follow them. There is no greater time than now to experience the full power of your potential. Make this the day you take the first step in the beautiful journey of bringing your dreams to life. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#dreams #experience #fear #goals #journey

Writers often have the cleanest windows, floors, fridges and toilets, the most up-to-date filing system or the best record for returning calls or e-mails because, in the moment, just about any task seems more palatable than sitting down to write.” (p.136) ↗

— Mark David Gerson

#filing #floors #fridges #returning-calls #toilets

Deferring judgement to a later date resolves nothing and all you are left with is a box of jumbled slides and a collection of knick-knacks and odds and ends. Here a face. There a sunset. ↗

— Will Ferguson

#travel-writing #dating

This was in [Orwell's] 1946 'Politics and the English Language,' an essay that despite its date (and its title's basic redundancy) remains the definitive SNOOT statement on Academese. Orwell's famous AE translation of the gorgeous 'I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift' in Ecclesiastes as 'Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account' should be tattooed on the left wrist of every grad student in the anglophone world. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#writing #dating