#writing

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift. ↗

— Mavis Gallant

#began #done #dream #father #fear

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet. ↗

— Patricia A. McKillip

#myth #reading #writing #change

Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues. I know, for example, that Trollope is considered to have been a brilliant novelist, but I’ve never quite understood what makes his fans so fervent. Still, our tastes change as we ourselves change and grow older, and perhaps in a few months or so Trollope will have become my new favorite writer. ↗

— Francine Prose

#change

My writing style has changed dramatically over the years, growing increasingly clean and exact. I like to think that I'm still improving -- that each book I write is a new personal best. ↗

— Barbara Delinsky

#change

I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#believes #both #disconcerting #discover #fascinating

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#america #art #art form #because #dying

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#victorian #writing-life #change

No, originally I thought that writing articles would keep me from having to see a psychiatrist, but I became even more depressed as a result. ↗

— Theo Van Gogh

#became #depressed #even #having #i

What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be--not seem--outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined--as a means of being spontaneous. That one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures placed on one to lie about one’s own experience. For in the same way that the writer scarcely ever had a more uneasy time, he has never been needed more. ↗

— James Baldwin

#writing #experience

A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can. ↗

— Edith Hamilton

#great #historical #knowledge #literature #people