#writing

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#inspirational #on-writing #reading #inspirational

E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#life #writing #inspirational

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. ↗

— William Faulkner

#writing #inspirational

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ... ↗

— Eudora Welty

#creativity #inspiration #literature #reading #storytelling

You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer. ↗

— Jean M. Auel

#writing #inspirational

Nature will forgive humankind just about anything, and what it won’t forgive I hope never to witness. ↗

— Paul Doiron

#forgiveness

People keep asking me, "Where do you get the ideas for your books?" From the worst moments in my life. I call that "literature through disaster." I got the whole Tales from Earth's End Saga that way, as well as Numenon. Don't be afraid of the hard times. ↗

— Sandy Nathan

#inspirational #sandy-nathan #tales-from-earth-s-end #using-hard-timesideas-for-books #where-to-get-inspiration

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don’t invite either into your mind. ↗

— Don Roff

#fear #inspirational #mind #self-doubt #writing

Writing is like a lump of coal. Put it under enough pressure and polish it enough and you might just end up with a diamond. Otherwise, you can burn it to keep warm. ↗

— A.J. Dalton

#inspirational #writing-advice #inspirational

Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#writing #inspirational