There would be a strong argument for saying that much of the most powerful preaching of our time is the preaching of the poets, playwrights, novelists because it is often they better than the rest of us who speak with awful honesty about the absence of God in the world and about the storm of his absence, both without and within, which, because it is unendurable, unlivable, drives us to look to the eye of the storm.
Frederick Buechner
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.
Joan Didion
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas—abstract, invisible, gone once they’ve been spoken—and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.
Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things (via Goodmorning & Goodnight)
Talent is God’s gift; either you’ve got it or you don’t. But writing is a personal responsibility; either you do it or you don’t.
Syd Field, Screenplay
As far as I’m concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.
Neil Gaiman
He has acquired these traits voluntarily, but once he has acquired them it is no longer possible for him not to be what he is.
(via wolfskulls)
When I’m 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I’ll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, “After all this time?” And I will say, “Always.”
Alan Rickman. (via valjeans)