aarthi

“As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If [the characters] grow a lot, they begin to influence the course of the story instead of the other way around.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The Vicar and Miss Marcy had managed to by-pass the suffering that comes to most people - he by his religion, she by her kindness to others. And it came to me that if one does that, one is liable to miss too much along with the suffering - perhaps, in a way, life itself. Is that why Miss Marcy seems so young for her age - why the Vicar, in spite of all his cleverness, has that look of an elderly baby? I said aloud: 'I don't want to miss anything ' And then misery came rushing back like a river that has been dammed up. I tried to open my heart to it, to welcome it as a part of my life's experience, and at first that made it easier to bear. Then it got worse than ever before - it was physical as well as mental, my heart and ribs and shoulders and chest, even my arms, ached.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle