PONDERINGS
Quotes and comments from the creative geniuses of our time—to inspire and encourage you to achieve the highest potential of your creative genius.

“Writing is a tricky business. It’s the engagement of a soul, and you can’t rush your psychological development, your experience.”
— Rosellen Brown

“The writer’s obligation is to give every character the best lines. Every character.”
— Stanley Elkin

“When I write in my journal…I’m going on intellectual sorties without having to worry about sounding silly.”
— Gail Godwin

“The knowledge of characters who are utterly not yourself is vital; other people, people who aren’t you.”
— John Irving

“Whatever the creative urge is, it can only be strengthened by questions and all manners of texts; that it is not fragile; indeed, that it is bottomless.”
— Eve Shelnutt

“The culture exists apart from the writer and the writer hopes to bring his or her individuality to bear on the culture, but also to be penetrated by the culture, so that the product is a recognizable cultural product but also unique to that writer.”
— Jane Smiley

“Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.”
— Johann Wolfgang Goethe