Scribble Quotes
Posted Sat, 02/23/08
I love quotes by authors, especially by those who have been enshrined in greatness and have stood the test of time. They know of what they speak. I recently found a large collection of passages at Quote Garden, and here are a few of the better ones:
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. (Ray Bradbury).
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads. (William Styron).
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E.L. Doctorow).
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. (Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith).
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. (James Michener).
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. (Lord Byron).
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. (Franz Kafka).
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. (Hannah Arendt).
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. (Edna Ferber).
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. (George Orwell).
Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free. (Samuel Johnson).
One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating. (Niyi Osundare).
Some of the quotes make writing appear torturous, as it sometimes is, but there are euphoric moments more often than not for me which makes it all worthwhile.
Tags: Writing