Thoughts on reading and writing from authors born January 17:
from English novelist Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey, The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall) (1820-1849):
There are great books in this world and great worlds
in books.
I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so
whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be, written for
both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should
permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman,
or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and
becoming for a man.
**
from American Poet Laureate and National Book Award
winner William Stafford (Traveling Through the Dark); also noted for West
of Your City, Allegiances, A Glass Face in the Rain, An Oregon Message
(1914-1993):
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
A writer is not so much someone who has something to
say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things
he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to
accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long
haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned
jujitsu.
The things you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do
not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them —
those are you, those are why you are in the world.
You don't need many words if you already know what
you're talking about.
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
Language can do what it can’t say.
Writing itself is one of the great, free human activities.
There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery. In writing, for
the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world
remains always ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined
vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth
between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can
offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in
and day out no matter what happens.
A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds
it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my
mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
Everyone is born a poet—a person discovering the way
words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what
everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
**
from Indian award-winning poet, lyricist,
screenwriter, and political activist Javed Akhtar (Zanjeer, Deewar, Sholay,
Saaz, Refugee, Lagaan) (born 1945):
For an average noun or an average verb, an average
mind can quickly create reference. Where did they hear it? See it? What does it
remind them of? What is its connection? When was it last used in conversation?
What has been my experience with it? A host of memories appear when you hear a
word you remember.
Words are a strange thing. You once saw an animal and
decided it's a 'cat.' But cat is a sound. This cat has nothing to do with the animal.
But I have decided it's a cat. So a cat it is.
**
from American novelist and short story writer Ronnie
Ray Jenkins (The Flowers of Reminiscence, The Flynn City Eggman series,
The Twelve Dollar Alligator and Others: A Collection of Short Stories, Boot
Camp for Writers) (born 1957):
No comments:
Post a Comment