Not all those who wander are lost
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Have the strength to be true to yourself even if you don't know who you are yet - Paulo Coelho
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“ 1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things
2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.
3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood.
4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home.
5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave.
6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember.
7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless.
8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth.
9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war.
10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes.
11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents.
12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.
13. I’m not a dog.
14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong.
15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things.
16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother.
17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot.
18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me.
19. You were too cruel to love for a long time.
20. It just didn’t work out.
21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back.
22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth.
23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home.
24. The women in my family die waiting.
25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you.
26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me.
27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick.
28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.”
29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile
30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love.
31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.
32. I’m a lover without a lover.
33. I’m lovely and lonely.
34. I belong deeply to myself .
— 34 Reasons We Failed at Love, Warsan Shire (via vvrists)

(via writingsforwinter)
Why did you use Death to narrate THE BOOK THIEF?

zusakbooks:

The simple answer is that I thought of the expression that war and death are like best friends, so who better to tell a story set during World War II? After all, Death was everywhere during that time…

imageThe truth, though, is that I stumbled across it, which is usually what happens with our best ideas; the trick is to recognise them as they stare you in the face and not ignore them…This time around I was working in a high school with some kids and we wrote about colour. I wrote about three deaths in that story and realised I’d used Death as the narrator. I immediately thought, ‘Maybe I should use this idea for that book set in Nazi Germany…’ I didn’t ask myself why.

I’ve often said that even in the parts of The Book Thief that embarrass me now, it’s the voice of Death that holds it all together. But it wasn’t as easy as that sounds. There were many problems, like I wrote 200 pages with Death narrating till I realised he was too macabre – he was enjoying his work too much and operated with a sense of sadistic pleasure…So I changed everything so that Liesel herself would narrate – which also didn’t work because it gave me new problems. (Despite my having the experience of a German-Austrian background, Liesel was the most Australian-sounding German girl in the history of all books everywhere)…but that’s the great thing about being writer:

EVERYONE THINKS YOU HAVE A GREAT IMAGINATION – BUT THE TRUTH IS, YOU JUST HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS.

The beauty of it is that just as necessity is the mother of all invention, your purest imagination is in solving your problems – to find a way to get it all to work. In the case of Death? I went to a simple 3rd person narration (which was everything I’d been trying to avoid in the first place) until it hit me. I heard the last line of the book in my head and thought, ‘That’s it. Death is haunted by us. He is all powerful but for the fact that he’s tired, and due to seeing humans mostly at their worst, he tells Liesel’s story to remind him that humans can be beautiful and selfless and worthwhile’ – and once I had that voice, I started the book all over again, borrowing from all the so-called failed drafts, and got there, somehow, in the end.

*Photo Credit: Quantity Postcards (www.QPFANS.com)

“ You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won’t really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we’ll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won’t wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (via excessivebookshelf)
martinaboone: The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut via Kami Garcia
martinaboone: The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut via Kami Garcia
John Steinbeck’s writing advice, from a letter in 1962.
» 10 Pieces of Advice for Young Writers
  1. Care about things. Show it. Be funny, barbed, and pointed when needed. Slick is easy; don’t be slick.
  2. Confidence and arrogance will both protect you when people yell at you. One is vital and one is poisonous.
  3. Learn to be your own devil’s advocate. Interrogate your own arguments. Interrogate your point of view.
  4. Successful writers can play loud and soft and can make a variety of harsh and gentle sounds, just like great musicians.
  5. Look at the people whose careers you admire and think about their paths. Don’t assume you want the fast lane.
  6. If you are read widely, you will get blowback, no matter what. Don’t let it paralyze you, but don’t reflexively blow it off.
  7. If you try to make your fortune creating controversy, then even if it works, you’ll be expected to keep doing it.
  8. Being young doesn’t make you dumb or smart, important or irrelevant. But you’ll be a different writer in 20 years.
  9. “Win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press’ll think you’re colorful.” Obey deadlines and house style.
  10. You are entitled to be wrong, to feel embarrassed, to feel like a jerk, and to keep writing anyway.

[as told by NPR’s Linda Holmes]

(viatheatlantic)

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