“No one’s life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.”
—Dean Ray Koontz (via misswallflower)
May 2012
108 posts
April 2012
112 posts
Mini Book Reviews: The False Prince & Re-Reading →
avajae.blogspot.com
What have you read/re-read as of late?
“And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing. I don’t mean we should all be reading chick lit or thrillers (although if that’s what you want to read, it’s fine by me, because here’s something else no one will ever tell you: if you don’t read the classics, or the novel that won this year’s Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud. The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can’t, it might not be your inadequacy that’s to blame. “Good” books can be pretty awful sometimes.”
—Nick Hornby, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (pg. 17)
“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely”
—Roald Dahl, The Twits (via 12mocking-jays)
“But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,” he’d said implacably. “It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.”
—Sarra Manning, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (via prettybooks)
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
—Carl Jung (via misswallflower)
Do You Read What You Want to Write? →
avajae.blogspot.com
Most writers instinctively write what they want to read, but do you read what you want to write?
“Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.”
—My Name is Mina, David Almond (via wordsfromya)
“A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.”
—E.B. White (via amandaonwriting)
“Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your level of enthusiasm measures up to others. If you like something so much that a casual mention of it makes your whole being light up like a halogen lamp, if hearing a stranger fondly mention your favorite book or game is instant grounds for friendship, if you have ever found yourself bouncing out of your chair because something you learned blew your mind so hard that you physically could not contain yourself — you are a geek”
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This is perfect. via @brainpicker
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The Mary Sue defines what it means to be a geek, a beautiful definition that falls (un)surprisingly close to what it means to find purpose and do what you love.
How to Finish Writing a Novel →
avajae.blogspot.com
There are a million and two reasons to stop writing a novel. When battling these doubts, what you need to find is the one reason to ignore everything else and write it anyway. (read more)
“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
—
C.S Lewis
(via girlinthegoldenmask)
