July 2011
58 posts
“Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.”
—Jane Yolen (via bethrevis)
“I flailed, hilariously, to be sure my writing could not be confused with mere entertainment. I went through an experimental phase; I grew the requisite chin beard. I wrote text upside down, scribbled counterpoint in the margins. Every story I wrote contained footnotes. I was like John Gardner’s Grendel: forever posturing, transforming the world with words but changing nothing.”
—A genre writer accepts himself - Writers and Writing - Salon.com
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“There’s something about writing fiction that badly unfits you from reviewing it. When you’re writing a novel, you have to stay focused on what this one gleaming ideal of what fiction should be. You narrow your taste deliberately, so that all that’s left is this one notional book you’re trying to create, and everything else falls away.
“Being a novelist demands arrogance. To be a good critic, you have to be humble.”
” —Judge and jury - Writers and Writing - Salon.com
“When a critic writes a novel, it’s like one of those movies where the cop crosses the line and gets tossed in jail along with the people he put there,” he said. “There’s no question, writing fiction has changed the way I review.”
—Judge and jury - Writers and Writing - Salon.com
“Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground.”
—Francesca Lia Block (via lomaaaa)
“I’d gone from being a terrified girl covered in bees to being a beautiful being made up of them.”
—Yojo, amateur urban beekeeper, among other things: ..:thrum:..
Hell on Utøya: A survivor's account of the camp attack (translated) →
translate.google.no
“I stood in the main time when panic broke out. I heard shots. I saw him shoot. All started to run. The first thought was: “Why shoot the police on us? What the hell?! “I ran into the little room. People ran. Screamed. I was scared. I managed to get into one of the rooms at the back of the building. We were many in there. We lay on the floor all together. We heard several shots. Were more afraid. I cried. I knew nothing. I saw my best friend through the window and wondered if I should go out and bring him to me. I did not. I saw fear in his eyes.” — Prableen Kaur
Harrowing and heartbreaking.
“It repulses me, this whole input world that you’re talking about, the constant facts. There’s this tribe in my book, the Lakashi tribe, and I’ve had so many people who are interviewing me say, ‘I’ve been Googling and I can’t find the Lakashi anywhere.’ It’s as if people can’t imagine something that can’t be Googled. No, I made them up, you can’t Google them. Unless you get inside my head, they just don’t exist.”
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—Anne Patchett
“The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.”
—Jose Saramago (via writingadvice)
