#writing

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

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

"But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent."

"I hate writing, I love having written."

"Writing is prayer."

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"

"The joy of writing.The power of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand."

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page."

"I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be convertedinto words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end."

"The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it."

"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out."

"I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM."

"If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it."

"I never met a word I didn't love"

"I type on my keyboard like I’m Beethoven on the piano. My words may be silent in the air, but they ring as music in my mind while I write."

"Only by examining our personal biases can we truly grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we truly grow as people."

"Writing well means never having to say, "I guess you had to be there."

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."