Writing
quotes and inspiration on writing
Writing
(A linked pair of writing dictums: “Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.”)
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable... See more
Epiphanies Come From Waiting
“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. Keeping a notebook keeps alive some illusion of who we used to be, allowing us to maintain continuity with a self we’ve already outgrown.”
-Joan Didion (from “On Keeping a
... See moreThe physical world and the cognitive worlds become linked through metaphors.
Victor MacGill • Unravelling the Myth/Metaphor Layer in Causal Layered Analysis
"writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see… or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different." - Stephen King