Quotes Tagged "writing"

Nilai akhir dari proses pendidikan, sejatinya terrekapitulasi dari keberhasilannya menciptakan perubahan pada dirinya dan lingkungan. Itulah fungsi daripada pendidikan yang sesungguhnya.

The things you experience are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are not the evildoers and demons (though, admittedly, they do have a certain longevity) but copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy.

Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, working for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed, and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

Don't believe in everything that is written. Not everything that is written is true

Writer: It's not an occupation; it's a compulsion.

Ennui had more distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg.

You never know, of course, when you write a book what its fate will be. Sink out of sight, soar to the sun–who knows. I love this quote from Frances Mayes. It pretty much sums up the Great Unknown of book writing.

If I can write, who possibly can’t. Even drawing a line in the sand is writing

Novelists,’ said Ivo, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels any more, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said Ivo, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.

The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained.

Good fiction writers have an instinctive understanding of human nature. That's what makes stories and characters captivating. Good spiritual writers share what they sincerely practice themselves.

No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand.

He abierto el cuaderno un par de veces, pero no me atrevo a comenzarlo. Es demasiado bueno y temo no estar a la altura. Me ocurre lo mismo con todos los cuadernos que compro. Al final acaban en un cajón muy profundo que tengo en mi estudio, como una especie de colección de obras completas inversas. Allí está todo lo que no he sido capaz de escribir. Novelas que nunca verán la luz, cuentos nonatos, poemas invisibles. Ahí se encuentra lo mejor de mí, aquello en lo que puse más empeño, la sintaxis en la que más arriesgué. Los cuento: hay treinta y cinco, tantos como libros llevo publicados.

I’ve always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It’s quiet and dark—the perfect time for creativity.

Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.

Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.

The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.

In writing, a good guy must never break any of the Ten Commandments. A bad guy must break every one. That's why writing female characters is so much fun. They're not GUYS at all.

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I've never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my written work. All too often it is to the imagination what ash stakes are to vampires.