Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me something different to light a fire under me.
Interpretation
A single supportive voice can inspire perseverance and ignite passion.
This quote reflects the powerful impact that encouragement can have on individuals, particularly in creative pursuits like writing. Despite receiving constant negativity from multiple teachers, it was the one positive affirmation that motivated the author to persist and develop her craft, illustrating how vital it is to surround ourselves with supportive voices that can ignite our passion and drive.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a writing workshop to encourage students facing criticism.
One of the many quotes on love..."Love can come only with time and sentience. We learn it as we learn language--and some never learn it well. Love is like a tool, though it is not a tool; something strange and wonderful to use, difficult to master, and mysterious in its provenance.
I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.
Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.
I don’t want to be a Princess,” she said finally. “You can’t make me be one.” She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing.
I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.
I was in the projects dreaming about doing music and now I've done music. When I had nothing to when I had something I still have this driving force that's fueling me every day and that's making ideas reality.
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it
I had learned, from years of experience with men, that when a man really desires a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win.
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
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