The racetrack to me is like the bullfights were to Hemingway — a place to study death and motion and your own character or lack of it.
– Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski: On Writing
Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.
– Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski: On Writing
The writing arrives when it wants to. There is nothing you can do about it. You can’t squeeze more writing out of the living than is there.
– Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski: On Writing
Writing, finally, even becomes work especially if you are trying to pay the rent and child support with it. But it is the finest work and the only work, and it’s a work that boosts your ability to live and your ability to live pays you back with your ability to create. One feeds the other, it is all very magic.
– Charles Bukowski
“Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is…” — Art of Quotation
“Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it’s lost” Thomas Bernhard, writer, playwright, poet, novelist, book quote from “Concrete”
Perec – On Writing
Can I measure some of the road I have travelled? Have I achieved some of the aims that I set myself, if I ever really did one day set myself aims ? Can I say today that I am what I wanted to be in the old days? I don’t ask myself whether the world in which I live answers my aspirations, for as soon as I’ve answered no, I shan’t have the impression of having progressed any further. But does the life I lead in it correspond to what I wanted, to what I expected?
– Georges Perec in Species of Space and Other Pieces, Edited and Translated with an Introduction by John Sturrock, Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, Penguin Books, 1997.
Perec – On Writing
To begin with, it all seems simple: I wanted to write, and I’ve written. By dint of writing, I’ve become a writer, for myself alone first of all and for a long time, and today for others. In principle, I no longer have any need to justify myself (either in my own eyes or in the eyes of others). I’m a writer, that’s an acknowledged fact , a datum, self-evident, a definition. I can write or not write, I can go for several weeks or several months without writing, or write ‘well’ or ‘badly’, that alters nothing, it doesn’t make my activity as a writer into a parallel or complementary activity. I do nothing else but write (except earn the time to write), I don’t know how to do anything else … I write in order to live and live in order to write …
– Georges Perec in Species of Space and Other Pieces, Edited and Translated with an Introduction by John Sturrock, Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, Penguin Books, 1997.
“Writing is a delicious agony.” — Art of Quotation
“Writing is a delicious agony.” — Gwendolyn Brooks, writer, poet, teacher, Pulitzer Prize for poetry, 1950
Place and memory
The memorable is that which can be dreamed about a place.
– Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking in The City’ in The Practice of Everyday Life
Jean Cocteau — words and music and stories
Jean Cocteau, né le 5 juillet 1889 et mort le 11 octobre 1963 est un poète, graphiste, dessinateur, dramaturge et cinéaste français. “On doit croire en sa chance, sinon comment expliquer le succès de ceux qu’on n’aime pas.” (Le Coq et l’Arlequin – 1918) “Dobbiamo credere nella fortuna. Come spiegare altrimenti il […]
via Jean Cocteau — words and music and stories
This stunnning portrait of Cocteau above was of course painted by Amedeo Modigliani [MN]
Naked Cities Journal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.