#edit

Books in the YA genre, in particular, should use proper grammar because they're more of an example to young people than adults books are. ↗

— Laura Kreitzer

#grammar #writing #ya #grammar

We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home. Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home. ↗

— Sogyal Rinpoche

#meditation #spirituality #buddhism

Having books standing on a shelf in a room is like having completely different worlds at the ready, waiting to be explored. ↗

— J.F Hermann

#creativity #dimension #home #imagination #inspiration

I just love dealing with people whose idea of sometimes is every thousand years,” I said. ↗

— Laurell K. Hamilton

#love

The singing Sun the signing moon the singing stars and the singing galaxies are the direct expression of the divine word AUM. ↗

— Amit Ray

#meditation #spiritual-growth #spiritual-growth

The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#prayer #spirituality #imagination

He wasn't aware of it but when he smiled he looked like an amiable bear. When he didn't smile he didn't look amiable ↗

— Emma Goldrick

#funny #goldrick #harlequin-special-edition #hero #humor

An awake heart is like a sky that pours light. ↗

— Hafiz

#personal-growth #spirituality #transcendence #transformation #personal-growth

It's a sweet thing to sit quietly in the early-morning darkness and talk to God for awhile. It's amazing what you gain from the conversation. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#meditation #ponder #prayer #quiet #richelle

Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compress, compress... Actually, when you think about it, not many novels in the Spare tradition are terribly cheerful. Jokes you can usually pluck out whole, by the roots, so if you're doing some heavy-duty prose-weeding, they're the first to go. And there's some stuff about the whole winnowing process I just don't get. Why does it always stop when the work in question has been reduced to sixty or seventy thousand words--entirely coincidentally, I'm sure, the minimum length for a publishable novel? I'm sure you could get it down to twenty or thirty if you tried hard enough. In fact, why stop at twenty or thirty? Why write at all? Why not just jot the plot and a couple of themes down on the back of an envelope and leave it at that? The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place. The obsession with austerity is an attempt to compensate, to make writing resemble a real job, like farming, or logging. (It's also why people who work in advertising put in twenty-hour days.) Go on, young writers--treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! Spoil yourself! Readers won't mind! ↗

— Nick Hornby

#humor #work #writing #humor