Joan > Joan's Quotes

“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“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

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”
― Willa Cather

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

“The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.”
― Annie Dillard