#writing

A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #story

You can't blame a writer for what the characters say. ↗

— Truman Capote

#character

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#different

Writers perform an extremely important role: they make others dream, those who are unable to dream for themselves. And everyone needs to dream. Could there be any more important job in life than that? ↗

— Félix J. Palma

#dreams #jobs #writers #writing #dreams

Most people keep their dreams to themselves, afraid to follow their hearts. Writers make their dreams a reality with each word, each line that flows from their pen. ↗

— C.K. Webb

#ck-webb #dreams #stories-dreams #writing #dreams

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#die

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#age

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#being

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#truth-telling #writing #logic

We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books. ↗

— Mike Stoller

#assumed #because #been #berlin #books