#writing

Nothing expresses Kafka’s innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of “writing as a form of prayer”: he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life. ↗

— Ernst Pawel

#kafka #life #writers #writing #death

Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see. ↗

— Henry Fielding

#fame #posterity #writing #death

Just give me a pen and I will change the world. ↗

— Unknown

#change #pen #writing #change

To write a novel, you need an iron butt. ↗

— Richard M. Nixon

#writing #humor

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#writing-philosophy #art

When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#writing #art

I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration. ↗

— Arthur Holitscher

#artists #creativity #surrealism #writers #writing

Inside Critics The critical voices in our own heads are far more vicious than what we might hear from the outside. Our "inside critics" have intimate knowledge of us and can zero in on our weakest spots. You might be told by the critics that you're too fat, too old, too young, not intelligent enough, a quitter, not logical, prone to try too many things... It's all balderdash! Some elements of these may be true, and it's completely up to you how they affect you. Inside critics are really just trying to protect you. You can: Learn to dialogue with them. Give them new jobs. Turn them into allies. You can also dismantle/exterminate them. ↗

— S.A.R.K.

#creativity #dreaming #procrastination #writing #art

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library. ↗

— Austin Kleon

#creativity #inspiration #writing #writing-advice-process #art

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent. ↗

— Honoré de Balzac

#creative-process #determination #devotion #empowerment #energy