writing

"Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cute out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted his people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world."

-- Orlando, by Virginia Woolf

because

"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."

- Flannery O'Connor

(One of my sisters posted this quote here in January.)

carry a book

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.” 

― Stephen King

two motives

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

― Bertrand Russell

in the bookstore

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” 

― Henry Ward Beecher

common, everyday blessings

via MamaDweeb

(Laura Ingalls Wilder)

dreams

via MamaDweeb

(Laura Ingalls Wilder)