Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature

bianglala

Some scholars of literature claim that a book is really that virtual place your mind goes to when you are reading. It is a conceptual state of imagination that one might call “literature space.” According to these scholars, when you are engaged in this reading space, your brain works differently than when you are screening. Neurological studies show that learning to read changes the brain’s circuitry. Instead of skipping around distractedly gathering bits, when you read you are transported, focused, immersed.

KEVIN KELLY

bianglala

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation--the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered--is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.

MARJORIE GARBER

bianglala

When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity.

EDWIDGE  DANTICAT

bianglala

Read. Read everything. Read lots. You’ll learn to tell the difference between good and bad and why things work or don’t work.

DIANA GABALDON

bianglala

Write. The only thing that matters is getting words on paper. It doesn’t matter if you write the book in a straight line, if you use an outline, if you write it in little pieces and glue them together. Even backward. Writing is the only way you’ll discover what works for you. You can’t do it by thinking or by reading other people’s stuff.

DIANA GABALDON

bianglala

Writers who write for other writers should write letters.

LARRY NIVEN

seribulan

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” – Fernando Pessoa

seribulan

Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes

Daniel Pennac

Foxey

My fave comic

seribulan

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn

bianglala

Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

KATE DICAMILLO

bianglala

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

KATE DICAMILLO

bianglala

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.

KATE DICAMILLO

bianglala

Write about the emotions you fear the most.

LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON

bianglala

Real writers revise their work over and over and over.

LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON

bianglala

Reading a stretch of dialogue is like stretching one’s legs after a long car ride: it gives readers the renewed vigour they need to get back onto the road, into the thick world of prose.

NOAH LUKEMAN

bianglala

We must remember that reading is as much about education as it is entertainment, and even small flourishes can help serve this function and add a whole new dimension to a text.

NOAH LUKEMAN

bianglala

Unfortunately, these days, ‘literary’ writing seems to have become synonymous with ‘showy’ writing, writing that is beautiful but doesn’t tell a story. This is a misguided trend. If today’s ‘literary’ writers would look back only one or two hundred years at real literary writers like Dostoyevsky, Poe, Conrad, Melville, they would find momentous stories—not just pretty writing—at the core of almost all of their great works.

NOAH LUKEMAN

bianglala

Writing is about simplicity and clarity, and the best way to achieve this is to allow each thought its own sentence.

NOAH LUKEMAN

bianglala

It is much more fun to write about villains then heroes. The villains are the ones that think out the scheme, and the heroes just kind of come along for the ride.

D.J MACHALE