"It's better to say too much than never to say what you need to say." -John Mayer
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”- Buddha
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”- Buddha
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be...
harricanes asked:
langleav answered:
No I haven’t read it! And that’s just my take on love. I’m sure others see it differently and I totally support that. Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation. Authors love books, that’s often the thing that gets us writing in the first place. Much love x
“Buying books is immensely comforting. Maybe I won’t read them immediately, but they make me feel so much better whenever I’m sad and blue. Just their presence, it’s like having more to look forward to.”
I used to be that person who read two 400-page books a week. Now I carry around a book with me everywhere I go to try and remember what it feels like to feel that connection within the pages because I can’t concentrate to read further than a paragraph, or remember it, for that matter. Every time I see someone engrossed in a novel, it’s bittersweet, because I miss what it is like to get lost in the written word. I just want to be able to read like that again.
For me, it’s not about the amount of books you read. It’s about reading the ones that makes you happy.
Anonymous asked:
observando answered:
I don’t know about poetry books. I can tell you which are my favourite poets:
There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
It is very hard to give any general advice about writing. Here’s my attempt.
1. Turn off the Radio.
2. Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.
3. Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
4. Write abut what really interest you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.
5. Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know- the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget it isn’t the same in his.
6. When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
7. Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
8. Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.
