Writings Quotes (page 193)
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His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was...
James Joyce
I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.
Gary Snyder
Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.
Philip Larkin
A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, sillouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that?
Cynthia Ozick
At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affai? which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.
Natalie Clifford Barney
