“The longing for solitude is a deeply romantic passion. But then writing is a romantic thing to do, predicated on desire, urgency, and an ideal of human connection, hardly available in what we wistfully call real life.” WritingPassionSolitude Book:The Art of the Wasted Day Source: The Art of the Wasted Day
“Writing was the soul of everything else ... Wanting to be a writer was wanting to be a person.” WritingPersonsSoul Author:Patricia Hampl
“Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mirrors, like certain cunning slight-of-hand routines.” WritingDoneHandsCertainMirrorsMysteriousImpulseCunningExplainingFunny Business Author:Patricia Hampl
“We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.” WritingSpiritualLife IsValuesMemoriesHistoricalStores Author:Patricia Hampl
“In description we hear and feel the absorption of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene. .. This personal absorption is what we mean by 'style.' It is strange that we would choose so oddly surfacey a word - style - for this most soulful aspect of writing. We could, perhaps more exactly, call this relation between consciousness and its subject 'integrity.' What else is the articulation of perception?” FeelsWritingMeanPoetryLiteratureConsciousnessSubjectsStyleStrangeMaterialsIntegrityScenePerceptionAspectRelationCreatorDescriptionSoulfulAbsorptionArticulation Author:Patricia Hampl
“I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.” KnowsWritingOrder Author:Patricia Hampl
“Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.” WritingBookFactsBigsDealsTasteOneselfBowsBig DealKnocked DownWrite Your OwnAcquired Taste Author:Patricia Hampl
“Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relationship with the past. Psychotherapy, that widespread method for promoting mental health, relies heavily on memory and on the ability to retrieve and organize images and events from the personal pastIf we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us—to write the first draft and then return for the second draft—we are doing the work of memory.” WritingFirstsStoriesPastMovingMemoriesAbilityEventsReturnHealthyCapacityMethodMental HealthMoving ForwardDevelopingRelyOrganizePromotingPsychotherapyHealthy Relationship Author:Patricia Hampl
“No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory.” WritingLongMemoriesDisbeliefHunchesReliability Author:Patricia Hampl
“Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.” WritingSometimesHardEasy Author:Patricia Hampl
