#writing

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart... ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#writing #short-story

Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice. ↗

— Shannon Hale

#writer

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing. ↗

— Alan Dean Foster

#writing #writer

A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ↗

— Charles Péguy

#writing #writer

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#novel

Write about the experiences that made you feel human. And whatever happens, please do continue to live and write. The people of your own time may not perceive your words, but be cheered by the fact that history has shown that, many times, mankind has learned to love an author, even if their own time thought nothing of them. ↗

— Kat Lowe

#experience

...the answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ... ↗

— John Geddes

#experience #memories #past #writing-craft #writing-process

When you travel with your family, you may not get the volume of work done you would if you were alone, but you can still do something while recharging. If nothing else, you can gather your own thoughts, write down ideas, observe people around you, and reflect on experiences. Working doesn't always mean putting words on paper. ↗

— Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

#experience

His copy was full of lofty echoes: Greek Tragedy; Damocle's sword; manna from heaven; the myth of Sisyphus; the last of the Mohicans; hydra-headed and Circe-voiced; experiments with truth; discovery of India; biblical resonance; the lessons of Vedanta; the centre does not hold; the road not taken; the mimic men; for whom the bell tolls; a hundred visions and revisions; the power and the glory; the heart of the matter; the heart of darkness; the agony and the ecstasy; sands of time; riddle of the Sphinx; test of tantalus; murmurs of mortality; Falstaffian figure; Dickensian darkness; ... ↗

— Tarun J. Tejpal

#experience

You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the difficulty lies...The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You...brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way--like the hand of a child. ↗

— Eugen Herrigel

#art #life #porup #writing #zen