Writing - Quotes
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can`t erase my mistakes.
Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother`s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I`ve written, what I`ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word "memory" into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.
You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
A classic rule of writing and editing: when writing, don` t hesitate to include something; when editing, don` t hesitate to throw it out.
I don`t need no arms around me.
And I don`t need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don`t think I need anything at all.
No. Don`t think I`ll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.
Love isn`t about ridiculous little words. Love is about grand gestures. Love is about airplanes pulling banners over stadiums, proposals on jumbo-trons, giant words in sky writing. Love is about going that extra mile even if it hurts, letting it all hang out there. Love is about finding courage inside of you that you didn`t even know was there.
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says "Everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book."?
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.
The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.
You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen, or because writing will mend something broken inside you, or bring something back to life.
There are lots of things in life that are like riding a bike, but writing short stories isn't one of them. You can forget how.