This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
—
Gary Provost (via qmsd)
This might be my favourite quote on writing ever.
(via bdoing)
(via luckypressure)
People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn’t have any money they waited in long lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in the shrink’s office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one
—Bukowski, Pulp
(Source: roobzzz, via quote-compendium)
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (via liquidnight)
(via quote-compendium)
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
—Hermann Hesse (via libraryland)
(via quote-compendium)
(Source: themoonlostafaerie, via jenniandthejets)
Print is not dead.
(via firstbook)
(Source: foxxypants, via snorewhite)
Before her marriage she had believed herself to be in love; but since the happiness which should have resulted from this love had not come to her, she felt that she must have been mistaken. And she tried to find out exactly what was meant in life by the words ‘bliss,’ ‘passion,’ and ‘rapture,’ which had seemed so beautiful to her in books.
—Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (via thechocolatebrigade)
(via quote-compendium)
I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
—Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (via honeyforthehomeless)
(via quote-compendium)
I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.
I’m finished as a human being,” she said. “All you’re looking at is the lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I’m just functioning by auto-memory.
He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.
—Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (via dishabillic)
(via agirlfriendinacoma)
The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
—Kurt Vonnegut through Kilgore Trout
