#writing

A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law. ↗

— H.P. Lovecraft

#fantasy #genre #horror #supernatural #writing

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived. ↗

— Martin Amis

#paper #writing #experience

İnsanoğlu nedense anlayamadığı şeylere kötülemeye meyilli. ↗

— Elif Shafak

#imagination #life #philosophy #truth #writing

What is written is merely the dregs of experience. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#experience

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#writing #experience

I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit. ↗

— Stephen King

#pride #reading #television #thought #writing

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#writing #experience

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life. ↗

— Eudora Welty

#discovering #effect #experience #happenings #life

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed. Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed. ↗

— Frank Smith

#experience

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#experience