#writing

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

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

A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#funny

So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it. That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#funny

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise ↗

— John Cleese

#writing #humor

Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. ↗

— Howard Mittelmark

#on-writing #sex #humor