sidebar: friday

2.01.2013

friday

"...'and what is the use of a book' thought Alice,

'without pictures or conversations?'"

Exactly. What is the use of such a book?

If you can't both see it and hear it, then there was definitely something lost in the telling of the story.

(Whether it has pictures...or not.)

"A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."

-- David Sedaris

"Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."

-- Ray Bradbury

"If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive."

-- Barry Lopez

"Don't say the old lady screamed, bring her on and let her scream."

-- Mark Twain

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."

-- Marcus Aurelius

"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop the story."

-- Orson Welles

"Story is far older than the art of science and psychology, and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes."

-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"It's your obligation to speak things that have truth, because this is your life's work."

-- Judith Black

"To be a person is to have a story to tell."

-- Isak Dinesen

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."

-- Maya Angelou

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact."

-- Robert McKee

"Increasingly, I realized that I could not merely tell his story. Rather, I would have to tell my story about him."

-- Ronald Steel

"The talent is in the choices."

-- Robert DeNiro

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

-- Stephen King

"Write the damn book."

-- Jane Yolen

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done."

-- Steven Wright

"Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art."

-- Neil Gaiman

"Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another."

-- George Saunders

"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences."

-- Sylvia Plath

"Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

-- Gene Fowler

"The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself."

-- Sherwood Anderson