#tin

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him. ↗

— Bernard Knox

#fate #meaning #plotting #purpose #writing

Listen closely. There’s a remote possibility that you might learn something: First, I don’t give a damn if my work is commercial or not…I’m the writer. If what I write is good, then people will read it. That’s why literature exists. An author puts his heart and guts on the page. For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don’t believe in yourself. ↗

— John Fante

#fante #art

"Think simple" as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles. ↗

— Frank Lloyd Wright

#first #getting #into #master #meaning

writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it. ↗

— James Lee Burke

#beginning #better #end #fire #learn

I hate the rhetoric of politicians, but I love it when writers lie to me. If novelists ran for office, I would vote for their characters. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#humor #politics #rhetoric #writing #funny

IRS is very poorly equipped to make a distinction between what is a religion and what is not. ↗

— Lawrence Wright

#distinction #equipped #irs #make #poorly

Give a poet a pen ↗

— A. Jarrell Hayes

#author #culture #humor #inspirational #liberal-arts

The art of letting go is simply about personal empowerment. Realizing what you’re in charge of, realizing what you control, and more importantly, what you don’t control. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#happiness #let-go #letting-go #life #move-on

There are three kinds of fighters: the aggressive fighter who charges in blindly trying to get the upper hand, the defensive fighter who blocks and evades until his opponent is tired, and then the most dangerous type of fighter, the one who waits for his opponent to make a mistake. ↗

— Aaron B. Powell

#martial-arts #art

Trying to live up to yourself is the most trying thing. ↗

— Ren Garcia

#author #inspiration #interview #league-of-elder #literature