Susan Albert > Susan's Quotes

“The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising."

[The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest, May/June 2009)]”
― Stephen King

“Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where we can go. They remind us of how to be human, how to live alongside the other lives that animate this planet. ... When we lose stories, our understanding of the world is less rich, less true.”
― Susan J. Tweit, Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.”
― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

“The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

“The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928

“Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ”
― Agatha Christie

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale..”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.”
― Beatrix Potter

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

(Little Gidding)”
― T.S. Eliot

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner

“There were times, in the beginning, when I used my journal as a wailing wall, but I learned not to immortalize the darkness. Rereading it was counterproductive. What I needed was a place in which to collect the light.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
― Wendell Berry

“In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver

“You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.”
― Carolyn Kizer

“The only journey is the one within.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.”
― Wendell Berry, Farming: A Hand Book

“It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“The universe is not made of atoms; it's made of stories.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“Nancy Astor: "Sir, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madame,i f you were my wife, I'd drink it!"
(Exchange with Winston Churchill)”
― Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ”
― E.L. Doctorow

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
― Elizabeth Warren