Category: Inpsiration
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Kafka on Editing Your Soul…
“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.” Franz Kafka
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Mark Twain on Adverbs…
“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.” Mark Twain
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The Responsibility of the Writer….
I think that the idea that I’m writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There’s even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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What is a Novel?
No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons. Ishmael Reed
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Books are Magic…
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly…
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A Book that Makes You Want to Meet the Author…
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. J.D. Salinger
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Haruki Murakami on Reading…
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. Haruki Murakami
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Writing from the Margins…
Writing can be a lifeline, especially when your existence has been denied, especially when you have been left on the margins, especially when your life and process of growth have been subjected to attempts at strangulation. Micere Githae Mugo
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Writer’s Block…
Many times, what people call ‘writer’s block’ is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical. Pearl Cleage
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Being a Fearless Writer…
You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over your shoulder, you’ll never write. Nikki Giovanni
Waking Writer 