#writ

I write because I love how I feel to have written. ↗

— Carol Lynch Williams

#love

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant) ↗

— Isaac Babel

#love

All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea. ↗

— Gordon B. Hinckley

#writers #writing #humor

I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don’t need that question answered. ↗

— Philip Roth

#writing #humor

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#wisdom #writing #existentialism

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone? ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#authors #book #book-cover #books #criticism

Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name." (Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.) ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#literary-criticism #novels #the-davinci-code #writing #literary-criticism

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition. ↗

— Trinh T. Minh-ha

#literary-criticism

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew…. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#writing #design

Don't put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family's life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn't move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer. ↗

— Arthur Hailey

#domicile #experiences #family #living #move