Thoughts on creativity

Wise words from writers and artists born on November 29:

 

from American novelist Louisa May Alcott (Little Women, Little Men) (1832-1888):

I like good strong words that mean something...

Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

--

from English writer and scholar C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity) (1898-1963):

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

--

from American author Madeleine L'Engle (The Small Rain, A Wrinkle in Time, A Circle of Quiet) (1918-2007):

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

--

from Lithuanian writer, playwright, stage actor, and director Antanas Škėma (White Shroud [Balta drobulė]) (1910-1961):

In literature, everything is beautiful. Even nasty things. Suicide is disgusting. But I need to.

It's disgusting to die, so I drink. I'm afraid to die, so I'm writing. I'm afraid to die, I'm swallowing pills. It's all for the sake of dying.

--

from painter James Rosenquist (Astor Victoria, 1947-1948-1950, Zone, F-111) (1933-2017):

When things become peculiar, frustrating and strange, I think it's a good time to start painting.

I'm interested in contemporary vision—the flicker of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Bing! Bang!

I stick the collages on the wall and, if I still like them after a month or two, I make a painting.

To be creative is to be accepting, but it's also to be harsh on one's self. You just don't paint colors for the silliness of it all.

--

from American actor and playwright Chadwick Boseman (42, Get on Up, Avengers franchise, Marshall, Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Hieroglyphic Graffiti, Deep Azure) (1976-2020):

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry—living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.

Nobody has to give me permission to write.

Literary bits for 22 November

 

Thoughts on art and expression from creative people born on November 22:

 

from American first lady and writer Abigail Adams (1744-1818):

My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

--

from British novelist, poet, journalist, editor, and translator George Eliot (Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, The Spanish Gypsy, The Legend of Juba, Middlemarch) (1819-1880):

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

--

from French Nobel Prize-winning writer André Gide (L'immoraliste, La porte étroite, Les caves du Vatican, La Symphonie Pastorale, Les faux-monnayeurs, Les nourritures terrestres) (1869-1951):

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.

Art begins with resistance—at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

--

from British composer Benjamin Britten (Peter Grimes, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, The Rape of Lucretia, War Requiem) (1914-1976):

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house—the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

One day I'll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

--

from Russian novelist Victor Pelevin (Omon Ra, Chapayev and Void, Generation P) (born 1962):

Reading is human contact, and the range of our human contacts is what makes us what we are. Just imagine you live the life of a long-distance truck driver. The books that you read are like the travelers you take into your cab. If you give lifts to people who are cultured and profound, you'll learn a lot from them. If you pick up fools, you'll turn into a fool yourself.

--

Iranian-French graphic novelist, screenwriter, and director Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Embroideries, Chicken with Plums, Radioactive) (born 1969):

You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise, why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.

Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words.

I don't like the word 'autobiography.' I rather like the term 'autofiction.' The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.

All big changes of the world come from words.

--

from British novelist and screenwriter Stel Pavlou (Decipher, The 51st State) (born 1970):

Even if mankind had any desire to rid itself of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed had been assured of a place in our hearts by virtue of time. By writing it down on a piece of paper and parading it as law and belief, Greed could be resurrected at a moment's notice.

That was the beauty of the written word. It was invariably taken at face value and granted permit to be spoken as the truth. It lived longer than the man.

And wreaked havoc in the process.

--

from Canadian poet Suhaib Rumi (@suhaib.rumi) (born 1988):

If you're observant, you'll find extraordinary lessons in the most ordinary moments. Reminders for the soul of what it once knew, but forgot.

A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

Thoughts on creativity

Wise words from authors and artists born on November 15:

 

from Nobel Prize-winning dramatist and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann (Die Weber, Der Biberpelz, Hanneles Himmelfahrt, Die Ratten) (1862-1946):

Writing poetry consists in letting the Word be heard behind words.

Experience is the basis of poetry.

Art is a language, therefore, a social function.

--

from columnist, radio panelist, and poet Franklin Pierce Adams ("The Conning Tower," Information Please, The Melancholy Lute) (1881-1960):

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

--

from Pulitzer Prize-winning Modernist poet and editor Marianne Moore (Poems, Observations, Collected Poems, The Dial) (1887-1972):

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.

When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.

Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.

In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.

I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.

I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

--

from Modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe (Blue, Black Iris, Oriental Poppies, Radiator Building—Night New York, Jimson Weed, Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills) (1887-1986):

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.

I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me— shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

I hate flowers—I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

--

from children's and YA author Daniel Pinkwater (Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, The Big Orange Splot) (born 1941):

I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art.

I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.

I sort of always like to write starting with when I learned how.

I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that would have pleased him.

I'd always liked to write, but I never wanted to be a writer, because it seemed a sissy occupation. It is. To this day, I find it terribly easy. And so, rather than trying to hunt up a text, I just wrote one.

Writing and telling are almost the same, the way I do it.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

All my books were easy to write—doesn't it show?

--

from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historical writer Rick Atkinson (The Liberation Trilogy, The Revolution Trilogy) (born 1952):

If I've vividly laid out the narrative, the reader will come to his own conclusions.

--

from fiction author Tibor Fischer (Under the Frog, The Thought Gang, The Collector Collector, Voyage to the End of the Room) (born 1959):

I always consider every place worth exploring once--just in case there's a thirty foot flaming sign divulging the secret of life, that no one has told me about.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

As an author, I realise, you're on your own. You have to do everything you can to help The Book. If I make sure people know it's out there, they can make up their own minds whether they want to read it.

Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.

I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.

You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

The way British publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.

The impossible lives next door to the possible; people ring its door bell by accident all the time.

Few pleasures are greater than knowing you can close your door, ignore the world and create your own.

Literary bits for 01 November

 

Thoughts on creativity from creative spirits born on November 1:

from novelist and playwright Sholem Asch (Dos Shtetl, Got fun nekome, Farn Mabul, Der man fun Netseres) (1880-1957):

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.

--

painter L. S. Lowry (Going to the Match, Coming from the Mill, Industrial Landscape, Portrait of Ann) (1887-1976):

You don't need brains to be a painter, just feelings.

--

from poet Edmund Blunden (Poems 1913 and 1914, An Elegy and Other Poems, Cricket Country, Poems on Japan) (1896-1974):

Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.

--

from poet Hagiwara Sakutarō, father of Japanese free verse (Tsuki ni hoeru, Aoneko, Hyōtō) (1886-1942):

All philosophers must, therefore, doff their hats to the poets when they discover that the path of reason takes them only so far.

Poetry is the intellect's product of one second. A certain type of sentiment that one ordinarily has touches something like electricity and for the first time discovers a rhythm. This electricity is, for the poet, a miracle. Poetry is not something anticipated and made.

--

from songwriter John W. Peterson ("It Took a Miracle," "Over the Sunset Mountains") (1921-2006):

A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine.

 

from science fiction writer Gordon R. Dickson (Childe Cycle, Dragon Knight series) (1923-2001):

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books.

John Le Carre said that authenticity is less important than plausibility.

--

from playwright A.R. Gurney (The Dining Room, Sweet Sue, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters) (1930-2017):

This is just me, me the way I write, the way my writing is, the way I want to be to you, giving myself to you across a distance not keeping or retaining any part of it for myself, giving this piece of myself to you totally, and you can tear me up and throw me out, or keep me, and read me today.

--

from country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson ("City Lights," "Once A Day," "Cold Hard Facts of Life," "Two Teardrops," "Give It Away") (born 1937):

Sometimes the best songs almost write themselves.

In Nashville, as in every other city, there's no substitute for hard work.

--

from 16-time Grammy-winning composer-arranger-producer David Foster (born 1949):

Don't do what you're taught to do, do what you love to do.

Don't be too precious about your craft... there's only 26 letters and 12 notes, and Shakespeare and Beethoven said it all better than any of us ever will.

It seems like the big difference between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love, with having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.

--

from psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry (Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy, How to Stay Sane, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read [and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did]) (born 1957):

A novel, or a book on philosophy, is going to use both sides of the brain: not only will you have feelings about what you read, but your mind will also get more of a work-out because you will make connections between what you are learning and what you already recognize.

--

from screenwriter Kim Krizan (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) (born 1961):

Creation comes out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration.

I write so the endangered thoughts roaming naked and vulnerable through the misty jungles of my mind aren't slain by the guns of practical living.

--

from synth-pop rocker Mags Furuholmen (A-ha) (born 1962):

All music that’s meaningful is pain-condensed and made into something you can relate to... People find consolation in the way that someone can articulate conflicting feelings and turn them into some sort of beauty.

I like that idea of tripping yourself and forcing yourself to do stuff that you’re not good at. It’s quite important as a way of progressing.

Two artists on creativity

Thoughts from painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer Pablo Picasso, born 25 October 1881 (d. 1973), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century:

Everything you can imagine is real.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

I do not seek, I find.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

I paint objects as I think them not as I see them.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

It takes a very long time to become young.

More thoughts on creativity from poet and scholar John Berryman (Homage to Mistress Broadstreet, The Dream Songs), born October 25, 1914 (d. 1972):

So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

We must travel in the direction of our fear.

Literary Bits for October 18

Thoughts on writing from authors born October 18:

 

from poet and satirical novelist Thomas Love Peacock (The Monks of St. Mark, Nightmare Abbey, Crotchet Castle) (1785-1866)

I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

A book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book, — it is a plaything.

--

essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith (Words and Idioms) (1865-1946):

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

There is one thing that matters, to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.

--

from short story writer, novelist, and screenwriter Fannie Hurst (Just Around the Corner, Back Street, Imitation of Life) (1885-1968):

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

Any work of art ... is great when it makes you feel that its creator has dipped into your very heart for his sensation.

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.

Writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.

But suppose, asks the student of the professor, we follow all your structural rules for writing, what about that something else that brings the book alive? What is the formula for that? The formula for that is not included in the curriculum.

Some authors have what amounts to a metaphysical approach. They admit to inspiration. Sudden and unaccountable urgencies to catapult them out of sleep and bed. For myself, I have never awakened to jot down an idea that was acceptable the following morning.

Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.

--

from children’s author Colin Thomson (How to Live Forever, The Staircase Cat, The Floods series) (b. 1942):

I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if adults cannot enjoy a children’s book properly there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This of course, is just a smart way of saying I don't want to grow up.

--

from noir novelist and screenwriter Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Perdita Durango) (b. 1946):

The only words worth repeating are from the Old Testament or Oscar Wilde.

--

from playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf) (1948-2018)

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.

Novels allow me to create a whole world.

I think art is a healing force, and if we give in to the joy that can be found in art, then we are able to sustain ourselves in spite of ourselves.

I've still got my characters in my head, and I can still hear them. When I go to the grocery store, I hear them.

--

from novelist Terry McMillan (Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) (b. 1951):

Let me put it this way: when I read, I learned the world was not as small as my house. And that everybody in my home town was not representative of the way people in the world were raised. And that was what saved me.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

Write from your heart, and God will take care of the rest.

I just believe that young people need to be able to learn how to write in their own voice. Just like a musician, you pride yourself on having your own distinct sound.

--

from screenwriter-director David Twohy (Warlock, The Fugitive, Terminal Velocity, Waterworld, G. I. Jane, Riddick franchise, Below) (b. 1955):

You do a drama, and you are limited by the rules of reality, and in science fiction, you create your own reality. Some people find that daunting; I find it challenging.

To come up short when you reach too far is not such a bad thing rather than not to reach at all, right?

--

from novelist Rick Moody (Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, The Diviners, Right Livelihoods) (b. 1961):

Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.

Writing the book was itself a process of concealing and revealing.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

The point is to balance on the edge between musicality and content.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

--

from novelist Amish Tripathi (Shiva Trilogy, Ram Chandra series, Indic Chronicles) (b. 1974):

As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.

I believe if you want to convey a complex philosophy, it's advisable to keep it simple: day-to-day lingo.

--

from novelist and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto (Galveston, True Detective) (b. 1975):

We come here to tell stories so that we can manage the past without being swallowed by it.

We're all born storytellers. It's part of the species. But, more specifically, I suppose a particular combination of sensitivity and trauma made me a writer: an essential disquiet with reality, which required exploration through portrayal.

I don't think you can create effectively toward expectation. I'm not in the service business.

For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand.

--

from screenwriter Natasha Rothwell (Saturday Night Live, Insecure) (b. 1980):

When you're a writer, there is a selflessness that has to happen; you have to have equity with how you treat each of the characters and the information you bring into the room.

One of the biggest things I learned was not to tell myself 'no' before someone else. As someone who's creative, I know the inner critic can be really loud. Early on in my career, I would just listen to it and tell myself 'no.'

Literary Bits for October 11

 

Thoughts about writing from authors born October 11:

 

from Nobel Prize-winning novelist, dramatist, poet, and essayist Francois Mauriac (Thérèse Desqueyroux, Le Noeud de vipères) (1885-1970):

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

 --

from short story writer, novelist, and screenwriter Elmore Leonard (“Three-Ten to Yuma,” Hombre, Joe Kidd, Fifty-two Pickup, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Justified) (1925-2013):

My purpose is to entertain and please myself. I feel that if I am entertained, then there will be enough other readers who will be entertained, too.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

 --

from novelist and environmentalist Daniel Quinn (Ishmael, Beyond Civilization) (1935-2018):

Don't wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.

 --

from screenwriter-director Charles Shyer (Baby Boom, Father of the Bride) (1941-   ):

Like Billy Wilder said, 'You want to make them laugh and you want to make them cry,' and it's very hard to do so. If you ground it in reality, you get a more honest comedy. You don't have to reach for jokes to manufacture situations as much.

 --

from short story writer, novelist, and non-fiction author Anne Enright (The Portable Virgin, What Are You Like?, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, The Gathering, The Forgotten Waltz, The Green Road) (1962-   ):

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

People do not change, they are merely revealed.

 --

from pop rock singer-songwriter Daryl Hall (Daryl Hall & John Oates) (1946-   ):

Reject what you don't want. Get rid of dead wood.

When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea—from the mouth, from the hands—that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.