“We can never handwrite the same message twice. Every crease and every accidental fold of paper serves as the most unique canvas for our words. The ink filling our inscriptions will never behave exactly the same way in a single letter written twice. The way we hold our pen may change, even if ever so slightly, from one word to the next. Each and every squiggly line is one of a kind and our longhand note may never really be replicated. This unwritten poetry that resides between the lines of our messages enhances our gift of words. If we want to make someone feel special, is there a better way than to offer them something only they will ever have?”
Kinga Lewandowska, Intelligent Change Blog
“[Hemingway] would always end a writing session only when he knew what came next in the story. Instead of exhausting every last idea and bit of energy, he would stop when the next plot point became clear. This meant that the next time he sat down to work on his story, he knew exactly where to start. He built himself a bridge to the next day, using today’s energy and momentum to fuel tomorrow’s writing.”
Tiago Forte
“Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”
Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird
“[Bashō] prized sincerity and clarity [in poetry] and instructed, ‘Follow nature, return to nature, be nature.’ He had learned to meet each day with fresh eyes. ‘Yesterday’s self is already worn out!'”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 191)
“[Bashō’s] fundamental teaching remained his conviction that in composing a poem, ‘There are two ways: one is entirely natural, in which the poem is born from within itself; the other way is to make it through the mastery of technique.’ His notion of the poem being ‘born within itself’ should under no circumstances be confused with its being self-originating. A fundamental tenet of Buddhism runs exactly to the contrary: nothing is self-originating.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 190)
“[Bashō] believed that poetry should arise naturally from close observation, revealing itself in the careful use of ordinary language.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 187)
“I tried to give up the Way of Elegance and stop writing poems, but something always stirred my heart and mind—such is its magic.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 185)
“In the end, without skill or talent, I’ve given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chü-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we all live in phantom huts.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 182)
“The attitude is paradoxical: the Zen poet believes the real experience of poetry lies somewhere beyond the words themselves but, like a good Confucian, believes simultaneously that only the perfect word perfectly placed has the power to reveal the authentic experience of the poem.”
Sam Hamill, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page XVIII)
“When I started writing this piece, I didn’t know where exactly I was going to land. I never know where I’m going to land when I start writing something. In fact, I’m deeply skeptical of any writer that claims they have the precognition to know where they’re going to end up before they’ve even started.”
Cole Schafer
“If you want to be a good writer, if you want to be a writer that has something to say, you can’t be afraid to write your truths, even if these truths are going to hurt some people around you. Good writers hurt their friends from time to time, this is the cost of doing business, this is the cost of writing truths.”
Cole Schafer
“If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know.”
Jean Rhys, via Sunbeams (Page 159)
“I’d always imagined myself as the kind of writer who would help other people tell their stories, but increasingly I found myself gravitating toward the first person. Illness had turned my gaze inward.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)