#writing

Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe. ↗

— Paul Di Filippo

#scifi #writing #writing-skills #science

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy. ↗

— Mary Karr

#poet #writing-life #life

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#love #passion #writing #life

It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work and lead this life, the one I am leading today. Each morning the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread, the table with the Phone, the books and magazines, the Times at the door. ↗

— Elizabeth Hardwick

#life

Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#thought-experiments #writing-craft #experience

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer--such as it is--is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience. Writers read literary biography, and surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#experience

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. ↗

— Robert Hughes

#writing-advice #writing-life #life

Tell me this--if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life--if you knew you'd never have a line published--would you still go on writing--would you?' 'Of course I would,' said Emily disdainfully. 'Why, I have to write--I can't help it at times--I've just got to. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#life

If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn't fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy Fieri, it is On Like Donkey Kong: swing the rope, jump the barrel, and save the princess. ↗

— Sarah Wendell

#romance #writing #life

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case. ↗

— Rabih Alameddine

#family #home #life #writing #family