#writing

Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book.' This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen. ↗

— Paul Collins

#writers #writing #beauty

Every person has a beautiful and sad story to share. Why stop at one story when you can roam the lives of another? ↗

— Evie Lynn Fritz

#beauty

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#innocence #writing #beauty

Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit. ↗

— Ludwig von Mises

#beauty

Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it. ↗

— Mark Leidner

#writing #beauty

Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#destiny #island #landscape #luck #south-carolina

Lua and Marie are holding hands. They look like they’re so happy, just inside this moment, watching the kids and the lights on their old fibro house. Lua kisses her. Just softly on the lips. And she kisses back. Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#beauty

Poetry is dying first. It'll be absorbed into prose sooner or later. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#pose #the-arts #writing #art

The sun hitched up her trousers and soldiered on up into the sky. September squinted at it and wondered if the sun here was different than the sun in Nebraska. It seemed gentler, more golden, deeper. The shadows it cast seemed more profound. But September could not be sure. When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean that it is brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#fairytales #fantasy #beauty

a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#forest #nature #beauty