#writ

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself. ↗

— Julio Cortázar

#writing #vanity

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#writing #introspection

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#writing #solitude

I do not fear that "future generations will not read novels," etc. It is probably a complete misunderstanding to conceive of serious art in categories of production, market, readers, supply and demand(...)art is not the fabrication of stories for readers but a spiritual cohabitation, something so tense and so separate from science, even contradictory to it, that there can be no competition between them. If someone fine, dignified, prolific, brilliant (this is how one ought to speak of artists this is the language art demands) is born in the future, if someone unique and unrepeatable is born, a Bach, a Rembrandt, then he will win people over, charm and seduce them... ↗

— Witold Gombrowicz

#artists #reader #science #talent #writing

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from. ↗

— Anne Tyler

#deeper #did #down #grown #had

Writing is the great invention of the world. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#us-presidents #writing #writing-life #inspirational

Many writing texts caution against asking friends to read your stuff, suggesting you're not apt to get a very unbiased opinion[.] ... It's unfair, according to this view, to put a pal in such a position. What happens if he/she feels he/she has to say, "I'm sorry, good buddy, you've written some great yarns in the past but this one sucks like a vacuum cleaner"? The idea has some validity, but I don't think an unbiased opinion is exactly what I'm looking for. And I believe that most people smart enough to read a novel are also tactful enough to find a gentler mode of expression than "This sucks." (Although most of us know that "I think this has a few problems" actually means "This sucks," don't we?) ↗

— Stephen King

#positive-thinking

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#writers #writers-on-writing

I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language. ↗

— Aberjhani

#books #creativity #determination #dreams #endurance

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets -- dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion. ↗

— Janet Frame

#dreams