#writing

Basically, if the author is totally un-educated, then the text won't bring out his best. Normal, educated people always understand that. But here's the thing—when the author is very highly-educated, the result is the same: the text turns out sub-par. Like if Charybdis was an uneducated cannibal, and Scylla was a sophisticated gourmand. Real literature snakes between the two. Like Hera's hair. ↗

— Elizaveta Mikhailichenko Yury Nesis

#literature #education

A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#dignity #double-standards #empowerment #equality #feminism

So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #equality

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#fictional-characters #reading #writing #equality

When I'm writing, I make words my b*tch. But when I'm editing, the words make me their b*tch. It all equals out in the end. ↗

— Richard B. Knight

#writing-life #writing-process #equality

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #writing-craft #experience

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#experience

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#writing #experience

The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric. ↗

— Meena Alexander

#writing #experience

A man cannot impart the true feeling of things to others unless he himself has experienced what he is trying to tell of. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#beat #early-stories-and-other-writings #experience-mistakes-wisdom #jack-kerouac #man