Category: writing
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Beautiful sentences
Then Joe Starks realized all the meanings and his vanity bled like a flood. Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible. The thing that Saul’s daughter had done to David. But Janie had done worse, she had cast down his empty armor before men and…
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Last words
Today there were two messages from writers, both carrying similar messages: “I don’t have long and so I’m prioritizing.” For Iain Banks, it is a cancer diagnosis which gives him just months to live. For Roger Ebert, who has been living with cancer for years, it was a further revelation that a “painful fracture” was,…
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Beautiful sentences
Line breaks willfully remind us of the wordlessness that surrounds and shapes the verbal passage; one could even say (if one wished to sabotage a fashionable critical locution) that in poetry the margin isn’t marginalized. Heather McHugh, “Moving Means, Meaning Moves.”
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Beautiful sentences
She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. Man attempting to climb to painless heights from the dung hill. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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Beautiful sentences
They should teach you the important things at school; the Battle of Hastings, that’s not useful, or not the way it’s taught. If they pointed out that life was all about getting your arse kicked by more successful, better-dressed people, that might be a help. Tibor Fischer, The Collector Collector.
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Beautiful sentences
“I don’t like this game,” says Mrs Minder. “Yes you do,” says Julia. “You just don’t understand it.” Maile Chapman, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto.
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Beautiful sentences
Teacher: not a good sign. Few people go into this profession because they want to. They’re failed somethings—bank robbers, conductors, pilots, people who never found the way out of the educational system. A teacher of English to foreign students; even worse. Someone whose only employable trait is having been born in a country where the…
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Beautiful sentences
Magic means nothing to the blind. Ann Patchett, The Magician’s Assistant.
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Thoughts on “Seven Tips from Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction”
Do I dare to tackle advice from Ernest Hemingway on writing? Sure. Why not? 1. To get started, write one true sentence. Possibly the best known advice from Hemingway. And deceptive. What exactly makes a sentence true? And it seems that this is almost a recipe for writer’s block. I can see a disciple of…