#writing

To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#face #gift #handsomeness #looks #reading

Her life had been too safe to need courage, and too easy to develop resolve. ↗

— Stephen T. Harper

#fantastic-prose #just-plain-wow-writing #courage

Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more. ↗

— Laini Taylor

#writing #religion

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored. ↗

— Paul Di Filippo

#writing #science

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#writing #science

if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway. ↗

— Stephen King

#society

It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#writing #art

I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#challenges #keys #writing #women

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window. ↗

— William Faulkner

#writing #work

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#reading #writing #work