Writing
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are
the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink
things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living
size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most
important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like
landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make
revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny
way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so
important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I
think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for
want of an understanding ear.”
~ Stephen King, Different Seasons
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to
write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart;
confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to
write.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I
write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in
assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then
build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into
its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this
impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before,
try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...
...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind
and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt,
silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around
you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your
everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself
that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the
creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you
found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds –
wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that
treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the
sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger,
your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the
twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And
if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems
come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not.
Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as
your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of
art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can
judge it.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“nothing can save you except writing.
It keeps the walls from failing.”
~ Charles Bukowski
“Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a
dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in
our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs,
read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we
ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across
the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel
terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we
secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our
laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us
because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we
envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a
dollar. We are worth so much more.”
~ Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian
Spirituality
“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have
minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”
~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only
what you alone can write.”
~ Elie Wiesel
“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I
should be doing something else.”
~ Gloria Steinem
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy
and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it
becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled
to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
~ Winston Churchill
“A writer is a painter without paint, he’s a painter of
words.”
~ Joni Zipp
