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ABOUT WRITING |
ABOUT WRITING |
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Ideas and Inspiration "It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say." - Sholem Asch
"To live IN the world of creation--to get into it and stay in it--to frequent
it and haunt it--to THINK intensely and fruitfully--to woo combinations
and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and
meditation--this is the only thing."
- Henry James
"To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think, is to weave them into garlands."
- Madam Swetchine
"The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea."
- Mortimer J. Adler
"An idea, like a ghost, according to the common notion of ghosts, must
be spoken to a little before it will explain itself."
- Charles Dickens
"When they come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't."
- Jack Kerouac
"I don't wait to be struck by lightning and don't need certain slants of
light in order to write."
- Toni Morrison
"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."
- Christopher Isherwood
"Inspiration comes out of the act of making an artifact, a work of craft."
- Anthony Burgess
"I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like
a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about
an engineering problem."
- Doris Lessing
"I quit writing if I feel inspired, because I know I'm going to have to
throw it away. Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick;
only amateurs believe in inspiration."
- Frank Yerby
"I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration
is; I've heard about it, but I never saw it."
- William Faulkner
"I trust inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But
I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day."
- Alberto Moravia
Imagination
"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will." - George Bernard Shaw
"Imagination is untamed. Creativity is imagination brought to fruition."
- Gloria T. Delamar
"Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderolt,
but a gathering power that moves through time, like weather."
- John Gardner
"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination
to the help of reason."
- Samuel Johnson
"Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, not a quality;
its seat is in the higher reason, and it is efficient only as the servant
of the will. Imagination-- as too oten understood, is mere fantasy--the
image-making power, common to all who have the gift of dreams."
- James Russell Lowell
"He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet."
- Joseph Joubert
Genius
"A genius is a person who is a crackpot until he or she hits the jackpot." - Unknown
"It's no fun being a genius when you are the only one who knows about it."
- Unknown
"Talent--genius if you will--survives the most stringent oppression. Quality
and distinction are in almost all cases recognized eventually. It's only
a matter of luck and timing (but the timing, unfortunately, can be way
off)."
- William McPherson
"Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible."
- Anthony Hope
"A genius is someone who shoots at something no one else can see, and hits
it."
- Unknown
"Genius, in fact, may be defined as the ability to control luck."
- Lance Morrow
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
- Jonathan Swift
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits."
- Unknown
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