#writing

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. ↗

— George Orwell

#literature #writing #writing-craft #motivational

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.... ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#publishing #writing #money

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we've looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them. ↗

— Scarlett Thomas

#heroes #villains #writing #motivational

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me. ↗

— Emma Thompson

#books #jane-austen #language #movies #screenplays

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades. ↗

— Mark Twain

#critics #drama #literature #writing #music

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#short-stories #writing-process #nature

Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue--the clue--lies there. I'm always ferreting out elliptical points, odd angles. What I write doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There is fun and religion and psychotic horror strewn about like a bunch of hats. Also, there is a social or sociological drift--rather than toward the hard sciences, the overall impression is childish but interesting. ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#religion

For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#duality #joseph-conrad #writing-craft #life

I feel the most alive when I write. ↗

— Kristy Brown

#life

All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. ↗

— E.B. White

#love