“You have to realize that you cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing.”

– Natalia Ginzburg, “My Vocation”

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.

Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”

― William Faulkner

I keep my writing private.

"I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."

#Read #Books #ReadEverything

#SlaughterhouseFive #KurtVonnegut

"...Above Mount Carmel's towering crest,

We saw the autumn foliage and the pines,

And far away upon the Giant's breast,

We studied out his form in curving lines.

A Sleeping Giant! lying there in state,

His head is pillowed on a running stream,

And laves his temples while night's shadows wait,

But noon still finds him in his quiet dream.

His dream must be of trees, and sun, and water,

Which rest forever on his upturned face,

Or of the rain-cloud when its brilliant daughter,

Curves her bright bow above his resting place.

Above his quiet form the lightning flashes,

And robes him for an instant in its glare,

Ere the hoarse thunder with its startling crashes,

Rebounds in echoes on his forehead bare.

The winter snows, the ice, and frost of ages,

Have lain above him in his calm repose,

While through the world's unlettered store of pages,

No written story of his history flows.

...

From many city streets his distant outline,

Touches the vision with delicious thrill,

And longing fancies eagerly incline

Your footsteps onward to his dreamy hill."

(Excerpt from Hamden, CT's epic poem.

View the full text here: goo.gl/IKcE4z)

"'I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.'"

"A great patriot, Samuel Westing was famous for his fun-filled Fourth of July celebrations. Whether disguised as Ben Franklin or a lowly drummer boy, he always acted a role in the elaborately staged pageants which he wrote and directed."

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once."

"Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence everyday?"

"There are two sorts of people. The players and the pieces."

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything

#ASOIAF

#GameofThrones

“Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."

"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.”

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything #HowlsMovingCastle

“Power resides where men believe it to reside.”

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything

#ASOIAF

#GameofThrones

“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”

“When you play a game of thrones you win or you die.”

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything

#ASOIAF

#GameofThrones

"Words are wind, and the only good wind is that which fills our sails."

"As I told you before, homosexuality is not a lifestyle with which I agree. But having been thrown into this... I guess I didn’t understand the magnitude with which some people hate."

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities... You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything #JohnGreen #tfios #dftba

"She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one."

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything #Narnia #CSLewis

"All that glisters is not gold"

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

Happy Bloomsday to James Joyce fans!

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything #Ulysses #JamesJoyce #Bloomsday

"Let the wild rumpus start!"

#Read #ReadBooks #ReadEverything #MauriceSendak #WheretheWildThingsAre