Quotes on a Theme...

I love quotes.
Sometimes I run across quotes that really strike me in some way for whatever reason.  I usually post them on Facebook or twitter ......but there they get lost in the timeline. =P
So I thought it might be a good idea to do a quote post here on my blog every once in a while. Then I can refer to them more easily......and keep getting inspired by them. =)

The theme for my first quote post is writing for an audience of one......yourself.
I'm a big believer in writing something you would want to read. If it's something you would want to read, it's likely others would, too. Please yourself with what you write and go from there.
You could be the best writer on earth......with a perfectly composed and edited book......and yet all you have in the world to offer that's different from other writers is yourself.
Your voice.
Your POV.
Your writing.

"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself......It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” ―Harper Lee

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.”
―Allen Ginsberg

“Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak......surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.” ―Hermann Hesse

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” ―Stephen King

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.” ―Virginia Woolf

“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.” ―Tim O'Brien

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.” ―Toni Morrison




paxamo,