#writ

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book. ↗

— Stephen King

#on-writing #stories #storytelling #words

The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #teaching

I fix the cramped, lined pages with my curious stare. How do you come to exist? ↗

— Kiera Woodhull

#imagination #insomnia #writer #writing #dreams

Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#running

I want to do something splendid… Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead… I think I shall write books. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#wonder

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#nothing

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#perception

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#teens #writing #young-adult-literature #life

President Bartlet: There's a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn't think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but there they are, right upstairs in the Blue Room. ↗

— Aaron Sorkin

#president

There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#disappointment #epigrams #fandom #on-writing #similes