#writ

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture. ↗

— Phyllis Theroux

#venture #writing #life

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#life #writers #life

Life is too short to dwell in the negativity all the time. ↗

— Michelle M. Pillow

#negativity #postive-life #postive-thinking #writing-life #life

[Writing about themselves] gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That's the funny thing about mazes; what's baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself. ↗

— Wally Lamb

#perspective #writing-life #funny

Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus) ↗

— Martinus Hendrikus Benders

#modesty #writers-on-writing #life

I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words. ↗

— Craig Claiborne

#words #writing #love

All the ideas in the universe can be described by words. Therefore, if you simply take all the words and rearrange them randomly enough times, you’re bound to hit upon at least a few great ideas eventually. Sausage donkey swallows flying guillotine, my love assembly line.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#donkey #flying #greatness #ideas #random

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#give #inch #play #write

Silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#writing #nature

Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don't know where I'm going with an idea, I'm lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the "creative moment." I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What's the American phrase? If it ain't broke... ↗

— Zadie Smith

#interview #writing #writing-life #life