Writing Quotes - Page 132

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.

Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.

I think one of the dullest things in the world is a letter filled with apologies for not writing sooner.

If I wanted to connect like I do now, I'd have to write 500,000 letters, get 500,000 stamps, send them out and wait for them all to come back. This stuff is instantaneous. I can see if someone is having a bad day and send them a smiley face and have an effect on them. It's fun, but it's also a very powerful thing.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.

You can't write nothing that ain't real.

If you can't write your message in a sentence, you can't say it in an hour.

Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar.

I think it's probably true that creative people are touched by melancholy more than the average person, and to the extent that delving into that shadow world produces good work, I'm all for it. But I think you have to be able to step back from the work, and say, "Look how miserable I felt. Look how beautifully I wrote about it. Now I'm going to get an iced coffee and chat with a friend." Writing should be a way out of despair.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol’s advice, write down that today there’s nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.

Oh, southern rappers... so hard to write a rhyme when you only know 30 words.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist

Portland in particular is a cheap enough place to live that you can still develop your passion - painting, writing, music. People seem less status-conscious. Even wealthy people buy second-hand clothes and look a little bit homeless.

Of this voyage, I observe, that it has miraculously been shown, as may be understood by this writing, by the many signal miracles that He has shown on the voyage, and for me, who for so great a time was in the court of Your Highnesses with the opposition and against the opinion of so many high personages of your household, who were all against me, alleging this undertaking to be folly, which I hope in Our Lord will be to the greater glory of Christianity, which to some slight extent already has happened.

When I take up my pen to write, I feel the strength of standing up and refusing to be silent. In an oppressive situation, silence is death.

I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting...around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent.

I think I must write a book. It has been my cherished dream and I feel an influence that I cannot resist calling me to the task.