“It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.” WayGivingWritingStoriesNamesPleasureProduceGive Me Author:J. R. R. Tolkien
“The only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is as a sort of second-class historian of the age he lives in. The "reality" he missed by writing about imaginary people, he gains by being able to build a reality more nearly out of his own factual experience than a plain historian or biographer can.” PeopleGivingWritingBookRealityAgeAbleClassGainsEntertainmentExcuseNovelistsHistorianImaginaryFactualBiographersVicarious Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose Source: John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
“My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, "Don't write that," or "Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats."” MenGivingShouldWritingSometimesVoiceFourTerribleGiving UpCatCriticalSentencesCoffeeAwakePetDragonsEggsBreakfastClicksBest TimesDisclosure Author:Jeff VanderMeer
“When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.” ThinkingGivingWritingYearsMayBitsGiving UpAbandonedBest WorkDrawers Author:C. S. Lewis
“In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guarantees and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of the bourgeois of the sin of writing, for literature is, in essence, heresy. The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists, that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a matter of principle regard the writer as suspect.” GivingWritingMatterEyeOrderLiteratureSinSituationPrinciplesCenturyChangedEssenceRegardOneselfGuaranteesSuspectsCommunistRepresentativesQualifiedHeresyBourgeoisNineteenth CenturyProletariatExemplary Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
“When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.” GivingWritingStoriesLightCertainCoursesLiteratureLossCasesWorstPromiseOffersToughTraditionErrorsPhilosopherDisappointmentDeeperInsightTalesOperationsHeroicInstructionEstablishmentSweetnessHypothesisTextbooksCorrectionsMethodologyHunchesConjectureInsipidUpbeatRefutation Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History Source: Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
“It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority.... I worked probably 25 years by myself.... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public.” PeopleWantGivingWritingTryingYearsFirstsChoicesReadingWillingPrioritiesCommitPublish Author:Mary Oliver
“Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.” GivingWritingMeanPersonsHas BeensWealthCreativityCreativeExpressionBirdCookingDancingTime SpentCreative ExpressionBird Watching Author:Anne Lamott
“I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.” WayGivingWritingYearsFirstsMeanDifferentWantedFormMastersExercisePagesTrainingVery GoodDamnThings To DoVersesCompelledWaltBalladsDays Of The YearFree Verse Author:Conrad Aiken
“When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.” PeopleKnowsGivingWritingBookChanceAnswersGive MeGive Me A Chance Author:Philip Yancey