#writ

he best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one – everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made – some even say that is how Nature created her species. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#creativity #literature #novels #writers #writing

Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#language #metaphor #writing #art

Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society. ↗

— Kayla Rae Whitaker

#writing #writing-life #art

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'" (One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.) ↗

— David Halberstam

#basketball #david-halberstam #julius-erving #professionalism #sports

The thing I write will be the thing I write. ↗

— Steve Shilstone

#quote #writing #baseball

I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone. ↗

— John Cheever

#alone

With my career I want to either make something or make an impact. Writers both make something, and make an impact.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#impact #write #writers #writing #career

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. ↗

— J.D. Salinger

#books #literature #reading #writing #read

We wandered in a frenzy and a dream (301). ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#travel-writing #wandering #dreams

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#bored #does #else #failures #i