December 2012
6 posts
“Everyone wants to give a writer the perfect notebook. Over the years I’ve acquired stacks: One is leather, a rope of Rapunzel’s hair braids its spine. Another, tree-friendly, its pages reincarnated from diaries of poets who now sit in cubicles. One is small and black like a funeral dress, its pages lined like the hands of a widow. There’s even a furry blue one that looks like a shag rug or a monster that would hide under it— and I wonder why? For every blown out candle, every Mazel Tov, every turn of the tassel, you gift-wrap what a writer dreads most: blank pages. It’s never a notebook we need. If we have a story to tell, an idea carbonating past the brim of us, we will write it on our arms, thighs, any bare meadow of skin. In the absence of pens, we will repeat our lines deliriously like the telephone number of a parting stranger until we become the craziest one on the subway. If you really love a writer, fuck her on a coffee table. Find a gravestone of someone who shares her name and take her to it. When her door is plastered with an eviction notice, do not offer your home. Say I Love You, then call her the wrong name. If you really love a writer, bury her in all your awful and watch as she scrawls her way out.”
—Megan Falley, “If You Really Love a Writer” (via pigmenting)
“Survive the drought; I wish you well. How sick am I? I wish you health; I wish you wheels; I wish you wealth; I wish you insight, so you can see for yourself.”
—Jay-Z (via ahorton92)
November 2012
4 posts
“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”
—Eduardo Galeano (via loveyourchaos)
October 2012
3 posts
“I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”
—Sylvia Plath (via quote-book)
September 2012
5 posts
“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
—Saul Bellow
“Don’t be someone that searches, finds, and then runs away”
—Paulo Coelho (via kari-shma)
March 2012
35 posts
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
—
Gary Provost (via qmsd)
This might be my favourite quote on writing ever.
(via bdoing)
