#writing

I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#challenges #keys #writing #women

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads. ↗

— Dr. Seuss

#on-writing #need

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#simplicity #writing #words

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#words #writing #words

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book. ↗

— Stephen King

#on-writing #stories #storytelling #words

The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #teaching

I fix the cramped, lined pages with my curious stare. How do you come to exist? ↗

— Kiera Woodhull

#imagination #insomnia #writer #writing #dreams

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window. ↗

— William Faulkner

#writing #work

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#reading #writing #work

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves. ↗

— Ruskin Bond

#style