Karthik M > Karthik's Quotes

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
― Angela Carter

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”
― John Cheever

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”
― Anne Fadiman

“I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”
― Mark Twain

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”
― Richard Brautigan

“One of the dictums that defines our culture is that we can be anything we want to be – to win the neoliberal game we just have to dream, to put our minds to it, to want it badly enough. This message leaks out to us from seemingly everywhere in our environment: at the cinema, in heart-warming and inspiring stories we read in the news and social media, in advertising, in self-help books, in the classroom, on television. We internalize it, incorporating it into our sense of self. But it’s not true. It is, in fact, the dark lie at the heart of the age of perfectionism. It’s the cause, I believe, of an incalculable quotient of misery. Here’s the truth that no million-selling self-help book, famous motivational speaker, happiness guru or blockbusting Hollywood screenwriter seems to want you to know. You’re limited. Imperfect. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
― Will Storr, Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us

“Write It, Work It, Publish”
― Cherry-Ann Carew, Whisper of Lies

“A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.”
― Montesquieu

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King