Up: [[Life Writing]] > [!Orbit] [[Marion Woodman]] in *Addiction to Perfection* > Unconsciousness needs the eye of consciousness; consciousness needs the energy of the unconscious. Writing allows that interchange to take place. > [!Orbit] Sarah Cooper in *Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination and Humiliation* > I love that my writing evolves as I do. I love that my writing helps me evolve. > [!Orbit] Salman Rushdie > Never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things — childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves — that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers. > [!Orbit] Isabel Allende > Write what should not be forgotten. > [!Orbit] Joy Harjo > As I write I create myself again and again. > [!Orbit] [[Michel de Montaigne]] > Our life is part folly, part wisdom. Whoever writes about it only reverently and according to the rules leaves out more than half of it. > [!Orbit] Barbara Kingsolver > Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. > > [!orbit] [[Rebecca Solnit]] in *Recollections of My Nonexistence: a memoir* > Writing is often treated as a project of making things, one piece at a time, but you write from who you are and what you care about and what true voice is yours and from leaving all the false voices and wrong notes behind, and so underneath the task of writing a particular piece is the general one of making a self who can make the work you are meant to make. (p. 122) > [!Orbit] Georges Perec in *Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* >I know roughly speaking, how I became a writer. I don’t know precisely why. In order to exist, did I really need to line up words and sentences? In order to exist, was it enough for me to be the author of a few books?…One day I shall certainly have to start using words to uncover what is real, to uncover my reality. > [!Orbit] Marion Milner in *A Life of One’s Own* > Sometimes it seemed that the act of writing was fuel on glowing embers, making flames leap up and throw light on the surrounding gloom, giving me fitful gleams of what was before unguessed at. (p. 47) > [!Orbit] [[Rebecca Solnit]] in *Recollections of My Nonexistence: a memoir* > Becoming a writer formalizes the task that faces us all in making a life; to become conscious of what the overarching stories are and whether or not they serve you, and how to compose versions with room for who you are and what you value. (p. 130) > [!Orbit] Elias Canetti > The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. > [!Orbit] Anne Morrow Lindbergh in *Gift from the Sea* > I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life. > [!Orbit] Henry David Thoreau > I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. > > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] > For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself. > [!Orbit] J.M. Barrie > The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.