“Yet writing a poem about something painful, she has discovered, can be her way of digesting it. 'One of the things I’ve learned is, if we try and put sadness off, it just waits. And in my experience, running away from sadness doesn’t do anybody any good.'”— Frieda Hughes, theguardian.com
“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”— Natalie Goldberg, amazon.com
“A book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no apostle can look out.”— George Lichtenberg, amazon.com
“On February 8, 2009, at 12:30am, Chris Brown beat Rihanna’s face into a landscape of craters and bruises. This is the architecture of violence. Later, Chris Brown described their relationship as being similar to Romeo and Juliet’s. In 2013, David O. Russell groped his niece’s breasts and claimed she…”— Meggie Royer, writingsforwinter.tumblr.com
“I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write about love-otherwise, my soul won’t survive.”— Paulo Coelho, amazon.com
“Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.”— T. S. Eliot, amazon.com
“The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, no…”— T. S. Eliot, amazon.com
“My work as a sculptor has trained me to write in the same way. When I start a piece I work it from all directions. I jump back and forth from section to section in no particular order. I leave broad ideas and impressions everywhere. I make notations and draw charts. I don’t write in complete sentenc…”— Annie Weatherwax, blog.pshares.org
“When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.”— Jen Knox, amazon.com
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence le…”— Gary Provost, amazon.com
“No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. Why then, is writer's block endemic? The reason we don't get talker…”— Seth Godin, sethgodin.typepad.com
“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?'”— , thoughtcatalog.com
“I thought about the notebooks I filled up in high school, the ones that I’m still too scared to open up and revisit, not because I think my bad writing will make me cringe, but because I’m afraid my bad writing will make me yearn to write like that again—and I don’t mean writing poems that compare m…”— Jenny Zhang, rookiemag.com
“I have to believe that the stories I write are true. I don’t care if they are real, but I have to believe that they’re true. I know that reality and truth are not always the same thing. I’m not interested in reality, but I have a great interest in truth. I have to believe that the story I write ever…”— Christos Ikonomou, blog.pshares.org
“The honest to god truth? In the year prior to becoming a full-time producer and writer, I wrote over 350 pieces for various publications. I worked to get where I am today. It wasn’t just lucky. It was work. But I’d do it all over again.”— Kendra Syrdal, kendrasyrdal.tumblr.com
“Will someone decide they know exactly who I am without getting to know me outside of a 900 word essay?”— Kendra Syrdal, kendrasyrdal.tumblr.com