Quotes from Barbara Abercrombie

Writing is not a hobby. Collecting stamps or coins is a hobby. Writing is a calling.

Creation, whatever its form, is not an act of will, but an act of faith. — LLOYD ALEXANDER

Among the few consolations of what has been called writer's block is the assurance that, so long as one has it, one is, indeed, a writer. Of course, the longer it goes the more it resembles, and risks being mistaken for, proctologist's block, real estate agent's block, and other obstructions ordinaire. — THOMAS LYNCH

At a desk, in front of a computer, my mind goes blank, but as soon as I take off (to the supermarket, to Australia), inspiration strikes. Journeys are the midwives of books. — ALAIN DE BOTTON

Don't silent your heart. Make a date and show up.

Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form. — DOROTHY ALLISON

The only way you learn to write is by reading and studying the kind of thing you would like to write — and by writing.

I walk around in my human fog, lost in my own head, while he comes up with twenty-two words for seagull.

When you consider something like death, after which. . . we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. — DIANE ACKERMAN

I wrote out of sheer stubbornness and panic.

Thoreau said that there are two kinds of writing: one reports the event; the other is the event itself. This is another version of show-don't-tell. One is at arm's length; the other is right in your face, in your heart, in your senses. When you read the event itself, you forget that you're reading — you're experiencing it. And we write and we rewrite to discover how to do this with every story.