Notes on writing

Don't confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesn't mean it communicates the right thing.

David Carson

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject

Joyce Carol Oates, To a Young Writer

Be nobody's darling; 


Be an outcast.


Take the contradictions


Of your life


And wrap around


You like a shawl,

To parry stones


To keep you warm.

Alice Walker, 'Be Nobody’s Darling'

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all  

Oscar Wilde

Writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.

Raymond Carver, Principles of a story

The way to […] write [is] as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way.

Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

“If even rock was interesting, if even this ugliness was worth whole shelves at the library, required sophisticated tools to study, and inspired grown men to crack mountains and saw crystals--then what wasn't?”

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood