"She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page." - Jane Hamilton.
"Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward."
Ernest Hemingway: “Goodnight my kitten.”
- Spoken to his wife before he killed himself. Jane Austen: “I want nothing but death.” - In response to her sister, Cassandra, who was asking her if she wanted anything. J.M Barrie: “I can’t sleep.” L. Frank Baum: “Now I can cross the shifting sands.” Edgar Allan Poe: “Lord help my poor soul.” Thomas Hobbes: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap into the dark,” Alfred Jarry: “I am dying…please, bring me a toothpick.” Hunter S. Thompson: “Relax — this won’t hurt.” Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!” Anton Chekhov: “I haven’t had champagne for a long time.” Mark Twain: “Good bye. If we meet—” - Spoken to his daughter Clara. Louisa May Alcott: “Is it not meningitis?” - Alcott did not have meningitis, though she believed it to be so. She died from mercury poison. Jean Cocteau: “Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.” Washington Irving: “I have to set my pillows one more night, when will this end already?” Leo Tolstoy: “But the peasants…how do the peasants die?” Hans Christian Andersen: “Don’t ask me how I am! I understand nothing more.” Charles Dickens: “On the ground!” -He suffered a stroke outside his home and was asking to be laid on the ground. H.G. Wells: “Go away! I’m all right.” -He didn’t know he was dying. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “More light.” W.C. Fields: “Goddamn the whole fucking world and everyone in it except you, Carlotta!” -“Carlotta” was Carlotta Monti, actress and his mistress. Voltaire: “Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” -When asked by a priest to renounce Satan. Dylan Thomas: “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies…I think that’s the record.” George Bernard Shaw: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Henry David Thoreau: “Moose…Indian.” James Joyce: “Does nobody understand?” Oscar Wilde: “Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.” Bob Hope: “Surprise me.” - He was responding to his wife asking where he wanted to be buried. Eugene O’Neill: “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and goddamn it, died in a hotel room.” Roald Dahl: “I’m not frightened. It’s just that I’ll miss you all so much. Ow, fuck!” - He was trying to be poignant for his family, then a nurse came in and stabbed him with a needle and ruined everything. I thought I would be understood without words.
In the end I believe scientists are hopeless romantics desperately in love with the idea that the world makes sense.
Scientists have broken hearts and by combining toxic elements and reading the stars, they are able to write poetry. - Royla Asghar, The Astronomy Series #7 "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." You can read all the books about writing and take all the classes about writing that you want, but the Horrible Truth is that nothing will teach you to write, except the act of putting words on paper.
- Diana Gabaldon |