...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

bianglala

The process of writing for me is akin to archeology, revising again and again to uncover layer after layer of a character’s experience. The closer you look at a character, the more there is to see: Complications and contradictions are constantly revealing themselves.

KIRSTIN VALDEZ QUADE

bianglala

Writing essays is like therapy because you’re figuring out: What was the important thing in that incident? Writing fiction is like an adventure. I prefer writing fiction, if I had to choose. I’m lucky that I can do both.

ETGAR KERET

bianglala

The practice of writing is a kind of self-instruction that no number of writing workshops can teach you. You have to learn how to do it yourself. The writing makes you a writer, it builds your discipline, enhances your talent, and draws forth the reserves of your character. Reading deeply in your preferred genre or style is very important, because there you learn the tradition you want to belong to or go against. Reading deeply in one category also reveals a basic truth – most of any one thing is bad. Knowing what’s bad and what’s been done before allows you to be good and original. Read widely to learn from people far afield from you, in genre, style, concern, culture, national origin.

VIET THANH NGUYEN

bianglala

Learning your own opinion of your writing is saying that you have to learn what you want to write and who you are as a writer. In the end, writing because you care about writing, and writing to be true to yourself, are the only things that matter. And that is how you survive the long haul to becoming a writer, not because of the lures of publication, fame, or profit.

VIET THANH NGUYEN

Awan_Salji

nak share quote daripada Allahyarham SN Shahnon Ahmad

"Hanya pengarang yang bertanggungjawab sahajalah yang boleh melahirkan karya sastera sebagai pembangun mental bangsa." - SN Shahnon Ahmad

seribulan

“To live a creative life we must first lose the fear of being wrong.” — Joseph Chilton Pearce

Awan_Salji

Awan_Salji

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

- Mark Twain

seribulan

“Don’t get it right, just get it written.” — James Thurber

bianglala

Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.

MATT HAIG

bianglala

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

RENATA ADLER

bianglala

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

ELIZABETH HARDWICK

bianglala

I am very aware of rhythm and often read my work aloud while I’m writing to check how it sounds. I also visualise every scene, as I think writing should make effortless pictures in the reader’s head. I try to avoid cliches and overwriting.

GILLIAN RUBINSTEIN

bianglala

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.

JOHN CHEEVER

bianglala

Believe that a good writing day can be one passed entirely in silence, with hours spent staring at a blank screen, or glaring at a single word or paragraph, knowing there is nothing you can add or change at that particular moment.

DINAW MENGESTU

bianglala

Read in all sorts of different directions, from poetry to history to science to sci-fi. And try writing in all sorts of different directions too.

JACLYN MORIARTY

bianglala

Write a journal every day but don’t narrate what you did that day—choose one small, unexpected incident, or one character you met during the day, and describe it.

JACLYN MORIARTY

bianglala

It’s hard to give advice on writing, because the best way to learn is through doing. No two writers work the same way, and everyone has to find their own path. So… write. Write a lot. Build a world and explore it.

JACQUELINE CAREY

bianglala

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

G.K CHESTERTON

seribulan

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.” — Edgar Rice Burroughs