not just for 20-somethings.
Guys I just ordered a ton of books from the libraryyyyyyyyyyyy.
Also, no one will ever agree that a “complete list of books” is complete. Ever.
Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.
—
George Saunders
Is this good writing advice?
What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.
—
Kobayashi Issa
It’s spring. Breathe it in.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome.
—
Derek Walcott
That day will come.
When one is striding bravely into the future, one cannot watch one’s footing.
— Elizabeth Peters, in the voice of Amelia P. Emerson, who might just be my favorite literary character ever.
A book can be represented as a conversation with one’s demon.
— Patrick O’Brian (via theparisreview)
Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild beast has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
— The Bible; Genesis 37:19-20 (NSV)
Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
—
Doris Lessing.
So hurry up and write your damn novel already.
Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.
— Dave Eggers
“Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.” Mohsin Hamid’s fitness tips for writers.
For more of this morning’s roundup, click here.
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.
—
“In the Desert” by Stephen Crane.
It’s Friday, y’all. Who’s writing this weekend?
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
—
Jorge Luis Borges
What has made you who you are, as a writer or simply as a human being?
