#writing

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#creativity #fantasy #grotesque #irony #novel

USURY: Everybody's looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management consultants won't tell you what they do until they've sunk five pints. I don't think anybody should give themselves air just because they don't have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If you're an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But don't fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just won't do it. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#writing #art

Becoming hurts. ↗

— Kat Howard

#transformation #truth #beauty

The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing. ↗

— Brian Morton

#descriptive #nature #beauty

A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#beauty

Fighting and writing’s deepest layers of beauty lie not only in the physical and mental realms of what we know, but also as an incognizable instinct, a realm we will never fully know but will forever feel. ↗

— Cameron Conaway

#feelings #fighting #instinct #writing #beauty

Good writers don’t moralize, nor do they preach, but they do create longing for the true and the beautiful, and that is why you must write with Christ at the center of your reason for writing. That does not mean that every book must be a retelling of Luke’s gospel, however, every worthy book written by a Christian will direct readers away from self, and sin, and put them on a quest for God and his gospel. Create longing for these things. ↗

— Douglas Bond

#beauty

The sun was trembling on the brink of the world, the shadows at their longest, and they still had several kilometers to go. ↗

— John Flanagan

#beauty

Write, write, write! Get your you-know-what in the chair and write more books: write the books of your heart and don’t let stress steal your joy. ↗

— Sarra Cannon

#writers #writers-on-writing #beauty

The moon hung heavy over the lake like an overripe orange, trickling its golden stream of light across inky depths. ↗

— Julie Lessman

#descriptive-prose #beauty