Tag Archives: fiction

Neil Gaiman (b. November 10): “You get ideas from being bored” & other quotes on writing

10 Nov

gaiman2Neil Gaiman, born 10 November 1960, is an English author who writes short stories, novels, comic books, graphic novels and films. His novels include Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.

Quotes on writing

  1. Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
  2. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
  3. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.
  4. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
  5. Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

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Roald Dahl (b. September 13): “The life of a writer is absolute hell.”

13 Sep

dahl1

“The life of a writer is absolute hell. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.”

~ Roald Dahl, b. 13 September 1916

pinterest.com/pin/39406565462803873/

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Eudora Welty (b. Apr 13): “If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.”

13 Apr

welty

Eudora Welty (born 13 April 1909, died 23 July 2001) was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

Quotes:

  1. Human life is fiction’s only theme.
  2. If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.
  3. A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.
  4. It doesn’t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.
  5. Learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.
  6. I’m a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
  7. Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.
  8. It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. 
  9. Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.
  10. Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

 

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Neil Gaiman (b. November 10): “You get ideas from being bored” & other quotes on writing

10 Nov

gaiman2Neil Gaiman, born 10 November 1960, is an English author who writes short stories, novels, comic books, graphic novels and films. His novels include Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.

Quotes on writing

  1. Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
  2. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
  3. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.
  4. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
  5. Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Tags: , , , ,

Roald Dahl (b. September 13): “The life of a writer is absolute hell.”

13 Sep

dahl1

“The life of a writer is absolute hell. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.”

~ Roald Dahl, b. 13 September 1916

pinterest.com/pin/39406565462803873/

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Paul Theroux (b. April 10): “Fiction gives us a second chance…”

10 Apr

Theroux1

“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.”

~ Paul Theroux, 10 April 1941

pinterest.com/pin/39406565461988907/

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Khaled Hosseini (b. March 4th): “Literary fiction is kept alive by women…”

4 Mar

Los Angeles Premiere of "The Kite Runner"

“Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.”  

~ Khaled Hosseini, b. 4 March 1965

pinterest.com/pin/39406565463767903/

 

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Neil Gaiman (b. November 10): “You get ideas from being bored” & other quotes on writing

10 Nov
gaiman2

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465126680/

Neil Gaiman, born 10 November 1960, is an English author who writes short stories, novels, comic books, graphic novels and films. His novels include Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.

Quotes on writing

  1. Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
  2. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
  3. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.
  4. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
  5. Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Tags: , , , ,

Taiye Selasi (b. November 2): “I write essays to clear my mind, fiction to open my heart.”

2 Nov
Selasi_crop

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465078969/

Taiye Selasi, born 2 November 1979, is an English writer born to Nigerian and Ghanaian parents. She has published three collections of short stories and the novel, Ghana Must Go.

Quotes on writing:

  1. I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
  2. As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.
  3. The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.
  4. As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.
  5. I’ve written fiction for as long as I can remember; it’s always been my preferred form of play.
  6. I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.
  7. That’s what makes writer’s block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has been turned off. That’s beyond frightening.
  8. So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.
  9. I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn’t that they are inaccurate, but that they’re incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn’t that it’s inaccurate, it’s that it’s incomplete.

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Eudora Welty (b. Apr 13): “If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.”

13 Apr

welty

Eudora Welty (born 13 April 1909, died 23 July 2001) was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

Quotes:

  1. Human life is fiction’s only theme.
  2. If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.
  3. A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.
  4. It doesn’t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.
  5. Learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.
  6. I’m a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
  7. Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.
  8. It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. 
  9. Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.
  10. Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

 

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