#writing

M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#magic #neil-gaiman #words #writing #dreams

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever. ↗

— John Irving

#failing #failure #piggy-sneed #save #saving

If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted. ↗

— S.J. Perelman

#business

the writing of poetry is a chancy business, it's currency solitude and loss, its tools coffee and too much wine, its hours midnight, dawn, and dusk, and unlike other trade the hours asleep are not time off. ↗

— Keith Miller

#business

I think novelists are in the education business, really, but they're not teaching you times tables, they are teaching you responsiveness and morality and to make nuanced judgments. And really to just make the planet look a bit richer when you go out into the street. ↗

— Martin Amis

#novels #writing #business

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#business

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#writing #life

To become better writers we must become the best thieves and liars in the business. We slink around the pages of everyone else’s work and shove it into our pockets. Then we run home and try to make it our own. ↗

— Chris Stocking

#business

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well ↗

— Agatha Christie

#change

I write like I make love: alone in my bathtub, as I let the fantasy overflow and wash over me.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#change