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Émile Zola (b. April 2nd): “I am here to live out loud.”

2 Apr

Émile Zola, born 2 April 1840 and died 29 September 1902, was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalisation of France. After the publication of l’Assommoir, Zola became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie. His novel Germinal established him as a successful author.

Quotes on writing: 

  1. One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
  2. The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
  3. If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
  4. There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

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Milan Kundera (b. April 1st): “All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.”

1 Apr

Milan Kundera, born 1 April 1929, is the Czech Republic’s most recognized living writer. He has lived in exile in France since 1975. Kundera’s best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been nominated on several occasions.

Quotes on writing:

  1. All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
  2. To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
  3. For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
  4. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
  5. Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.
  6. The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists’ discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.

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Paul Verlaine (b. March 30): “The poet is a madman lost in adventure.”

30 Mar

Paul Verlaine, born 30 March 1844 and died 8 January 1896, was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.

Writing quotes:

  1. The poet is a madman lost in adventure.
  2. I am the Empire at the end of the decadence.
  3. A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

 

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Jo Nesbø (b. March 29): “It’s impossible to write anything without being political.”

29 Mar

Jo Nesbø, born 29 March 1960, is an Edgar Award nominated Norwegian author and musician. He is well-known for his crime novels featuring Inspector Harry Hole. He is also the vocalist and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre.

Writing quotes:

  1. I read. And I read. I basically put off writing as long as I could, that was until I was 37. Then I started writing like a madman.
  2. For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. I’m really happy when I’m waiting for a plane and the message comes that it’s three hours late. Great, I’ll get to write!
  3. Music for me is more like releasing tension, I don’t really have a method. Writing is about dreaming things up, using your imagination and instantly knowing whether you’re onto something. Writing music has taken the back seat to writing fiction now.
  4. It’s impossible to write anything without being political. You have to make political choices in description. You make choices about what to write and what not to write and those choices are bound to be political. But I see myself as an entertainer. I don’t start with a political agenda. I start with something human, whether evil, love, hate. I’m a vulture. I will use anything to drive the story forward.

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Jonathan Ames (b. March 23): “I don’t know what’s more difficult, life or the English language.”

23 Mar

Jonathan Ames, born 23 March 1964, is an American author of novels and comic memoirs, which include Wake Up, Sir! And The Extra Man. He was also a columnist for the New York Press. He created the HBO television series Bored to Death.

Quotes on writing:

  1. I don’t know what’s more difficult, life or the English language.
  2. A lot of writing is a form of seeing – putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
  3. People don’t expect too much from literature. They just want to know they’re not alone with being confused.
  4. A lot of writers, probably because they’re sensitive and that makes them want to be writers, have fears about their masculinity, so they overcompensate by having an interest in boxing and tough-guy things.
  5. When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels.

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Lauren Kate (b. March 21): “See the entire world as your muse.”

21 Mar

Kate

Lauren Kate, born 21 March 1981, is an international best-selling author of young adult fiction. Her seven books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

Four quotes on writing:

  1. Be fearless. Be glib. Be enigmatic. Read everything you can. Always finish your stories. Find a writing friend who can give you comments and help you get perspective.
  2. I surprised myself by meticulously plotting out Fallen before I wrote it. Character descriptions, paragraph-long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal.
  3. I majored in creative writing in college, and went on to get a masters degree in fiction — but I don’t think those things are necessary to being a good writer. Practice, curiosity, voracious reading, and diligence are more important than any degree.
  4. Live your life as a curious person. Try to see the entire world as your muse. Ask questions. Dismiss nothing. Eavesdrop. Always eavesdrop. You’ll have more fun, learn all the time, and when the time comes to sit down and write, you’ll have a whole line-up of stories just waiting to be told.

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Richard Condon (b. March 18): “Writers are too self-centered to be lonely.”

18 Mar

Richard Condon (born 18 March 1915, died 9 April 1996) was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers, including Prizzi’s Honor and The Manchurian Candidate.

Five quotes on writing:

  1. Writers are too self-centered to be lonely.
  2. I’m a man of the marketplace as well as an artist. I’m a pawnbroker of myth.
  3. Amateur psychiatric prognosis can be fascinating when there’s absolutely nothing else to do.
  4. I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It’s the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what’s going to happen three hours from now.
  5. Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it’s the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins.

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Peter Robinson (b. Mar 17): “Writers have to be able to enjoy solitude…”

17 Mar
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Peter Robinson, born 17 March 1950, is a Canadian crime writer born in Britain. He is best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks. He has written 25 books.

Writing quotes:

  1. I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I’ve always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.
  2. Put your bum on the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. Read widely, too. When my students fail it’s usually nothing to do with lack of talent but everything to do with lack of application. So many people want to be writers, but few actually want to write!
  3. I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.
  4. I like newspaper stories that are incomplete, that give me room to imagine the rest. It’s no good to me reading about something that’s all neatly solved and wrapped up. That’s why so many of my stories revolve around human psychology, around why someone commits a certain crime, or series of crimes. I don’t profess to know the answers but I like to explore the possibilities.

 

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Alice Hoffman (b. March 16): “Books may well be the only true magic.”

16 Mar
hoffman

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Alice Hoffman, born 16 March 1952, is an American novelist best known for her novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism.

Quotes on writing:

  1. Books may well be the only true magic.
  2. No one knows how to write a novel until it’s been written.
  3. You can’t dispute the ridiculous. You can’t argue reasonably with evil.
  4. I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.
  5. That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.
  6. After a while, the characters I’m writing begin to feel real to me. That’s when I know I’m heading in the right direction.
  7. I’ve been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.
  8. All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them – much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.
  9. The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her – she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don’t.
  10. My theory is that everyone, at one time or another, has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who’s different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

 

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Bret Easton Ellis (b. 7 March 1964): “All of my books come from pain.”

7 Mar

Bret Easton Ellis, born 7 March 1964, is an American novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. His novels include Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho. His works have been translated into 27 languages.

Quotes on writing:

  1. The better you look, the more you see.
  2. No one is drawn to writing about being happy or feelings of joy.
  3. Life is like a typographical error: we’re constantly writing and rewriting things over each other.
  4. Everyone I know who is successful has issues with their father, regardless of whether it was sports or business or entertainment.
  5. You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you.

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