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#writing

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #writing




In any case I fully endorse the singer's attitude towards the booklet that he will write and the child he wishes to educate, for not only am I familiar with the passion for education but the desire to write a small book has for a long time also not been far from my thoughts, and now that I am free of my office this desire has assumed the proportions of a precious and alluring promise—to write a book in all good-humor and at my leisure, a pamphlet, an insignificant booklet for my friends and fellow thinkers.' 'And upon what subject, may I ask?' put in Designori with curiosity. 'Oh the subject would not matter so much. It would merely be an opportunity for me to weave my thoughts around some theme and to enjoy the good fortune of having a great deal of free time. The chief thing in my case would be the tone—a tone not of scholarship but a decorous mean between respect and intimacy, between gravity and playfulness, a friendly communication and utterance of sundry things that I believe I have experienced and learned… In the immediate future I cannot anticipate the joys and problems of writing my little book, for I have to prepare myself the luxury of blossoming into authorship, as I see it, with a comfortable but careful presentation of things, not for my solitary pleasure but always bearing in mind a few good friends and readers. ↗


— Hermann Hesse


#attitude

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it. ↗


— Dorianne Laux


#poetry #writer #writing #romantic

Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire. (The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.)" (Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738) ↗


— Voltaire


#dullness #restraint #writing #secret

One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper. (And if you ever think otherwise, then you've turned into an arrogant self-satisfied prat, and should look for another job or another avocation or another weekend activity.) So you have to learn to live with the fact that you're never going to write well enough. Of course that's what keeps you trying -- trying as hard as you can -- which is a good thing. ↗


— Robin McKinley


#perception

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written. ↗


— Italo Calvino


#novel

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ↗


— Virginia Woolf


#dignity #empowerment #feminism #gender #history

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody. ↗


— Leonora Carrington


#military #novelists #writing #military

I had written all I was going to write, if the truth had been known, and there is nothing wrong with that. If more writers knew that, the world would be saved a lot of bad books, and more people--men and women alike--could go on to happier, more productive lives. ↗


— Richard Ford


#writing #men

THE POLITICIAN If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish! CATHERINE Especially since you can't rob the people anyway. THE POLITICIAN Sure...How was that? CATHERINE What you rob, you spend. And what you spend goes back to the people. So where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books. THE POLITICIAN That book should be in every home! ↗


— Preston Sturges


#writing #men

It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another. ↗


— Stephen Crane


#value #writing #men






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