Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature

seribulan

seribulan

seribulan

seribulan

bianglala

I enjoy writing crime. It’s a puzzle. It’s a craft. Can I keep you turning the pages? I love it when people are midway through a book and I say: ‘Who did it?’ and they always get it wrong.

LYNDA LA PANTE

bianglala

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It’s also an influence in the way you see everything – in the way you feel your life.

THOM GUNN

bianglala

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer – perhaps more.

JASPER FFORDE

pelicano

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

seribulan

      “A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”  
  ―      Robertson Davies




“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”  
  ―      Anne Herbert




      “A book is a gift you can open again and again.”  
  ―      Garrison Keillor  


      “Honestly, I hate when in books, the guys changes the girl's life. Like, no. The girl needs to change her own life.”  
  ―      Sasha Alsberg



      “I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.”  
  ―      Steven Wright  

bianglala

Writing is not easy for me. The more successful I become, in fact, the harder it seems to get, because I feel every critic and reader in the world is looking over my shoulder and shaking their heads about how bad that last sentence turned out. But deadlines help propel me forward, and there are days when I’ll read what I wrote the day before and will feel quite satisfied.

TESS GERRITSEN

bianglala

[I write] in a small office at the front  of my small house, where I can see people walking past. In a nice seaside cottage I just stare at the sea. I once tried to shut myself away to write a book and nearly went off my head with loneliness. I need a nice urban landscape, with passing cats.

KERRY GREENWOOD

bianglala

I can’t speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself… Writing doesn’t make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead.

KARL OVE KNAUSGARD

bianglala

Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows.

KARL OVE KNAUSGARD

bianglala

The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it’s not corrupted.

RICHARD POWERS

bianglala

The appeal of writing is the illusion that you can somehow bring about the completion and perfection of those things that will always elude you in real time.

RICHARD POWERS

bianglala

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

RICHARD POWERS

bianglala

I write what I want, of course, what moves me, but because I engage in real issues, I end up depicting ‘real lives’ and ‘real stories’ even though that’s not always necessarily what I set out to do.

NOVIOLET BULAWAYO

bianglala

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

bianglala

Write. Write. Write. Don’t worry so much about being published or discovered. Worry about writing what you have to write — what you need to say, and how you’re going to say it. The rest will come.

UZONDENMA IWEALA

bianglala

When you write, you are not necessarily writing to get attention. You are writing for people to read. You learn to tell a story, and it’s great if people want to read that story. It doesn’t always happen.

UZONDENMA IWEALA