#writ

Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling "betrayals" of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning. ↗

— Sue Monk Kidd

#writing #age

I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#philosophy #writer #age

The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#writers #writing #age

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#life

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#bad-writing #dullness #humor #writing #age

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die. ↗

— Yasunari Kawabata

#retirement #writing #age

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#vision #writing #art

Any writer must find it difficult to assess her own work honestly and objectively, so I can only say that I hope my books may be considered as well-written. They appear to be popular among all age groups in the nine countries where they have been published. This is probably because the reader can believe in the characters and the plot holds the interest to the end. They tend to cheer rather than depress. ↗

— Margaret Maddocks

#age

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#writers #writing #age

(T)here are worse things than falling on your face right out of college...Like instant, unearned success. Like getting your first novel accepted by the first publisher you send it to. Like getting your first rejection slip at the age of thirty-five. ↗

— Jincy Willett

#age