writing

"I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."

"You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest."

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it."

"Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?"

"Tweeting is talking into the abyss, filling a void in your life by avoiding real human contact."

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

"The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."

"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."

"Tell me this--if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life--if you knew you'd never have a line published--would you still go on writing--would you?''Of course I would,' said Emily disdainfully. 'Why, I have to write--I can't help it at times--I've just got to."

"The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

"Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you."

"Buku yang kau tulis adalah semacam jejak yang terus menyala di dunia, dan bisa menjadi cahaya akhiratmu."

"Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery."

"When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can."

"It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written."

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."

"First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft."

"Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism."

"Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural."

"You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way."