...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

WhiskeyScotch

“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”

― Terry Pratchett

WhiskeyScotch

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”

― Horacio Quiroga

WhiskeyScotch

“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.”

― Vladimir Nabokov

seribulan

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
—Enid Bagnold

seribulan

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
—Allen Ginsberg, WD

seribulan

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”
—William S. Burroughs

cloud_jade

“Life is like a novel.It’s filled with suspense.You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page”
-Sidney Sheldon

cloud_jade

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”
-Joshua J.Marine

WhiskeyScotch

“People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen

WhiskeyScotch

“Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.”

― André Breton

WhiskeyScotch

“There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.”

― Diane Duane

WhiskeyScotch

“Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.”

― Winston S. Churchill

WhiskeyScotch

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

― Ted Chiang

WhiskeyScotch

“There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.”

― Alex de Campi

WhiskeyScotch

“No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it”

― Karl R. Popper

WhiskeyScotch

“A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.”

― Tim O'Brien

WhiskeyScotch

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”

― Muriel Rukeyser

WhiskeyScotch

“The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.”

― Samuel Johnson

seribulan

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” — Charles William Eliot

WhiskeyScotch

“In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.”

― Rose Tremain