Quotable Quotes

Although focusing on poetry, I have found myself being inspired by all of the writers at the Mildura Writer’s Festival. They’ve all shared their knowledge and wisdom on the process of writing and their inspirations for writing. This has been really valuable to me as someone who used to write frequently and suddenly stopped. Coming to this festival, I hoped to reignite my love for writing and reading. I want to share some of the quotes from the writers that really stood out for me throughout the festival. These were the quotes that I just had to write down as soon as they said them because they connected with me in some way. Throughout the festival, I threw some of these quotes up on twitter. Although I’m not a frequent user of twitter, sometimes my posts received some kind of reaction from the writers or organisers which gave me a buzz! Here are some of the quotes I put on twitter:

Here are some other quotes I noted down that resonated with me:

“The root of the word amateur is love” – David Malouf

“Fiction has that special element of connection because it is emotional” – Olga Lorenzo

 “I believe in the power of feeling over the power of thought” – Sunil Yapa

“There’s a real human being in that armour” – Sunil Yapa (on having empathy towards riot police)

“What does it connect with me that means I can’t let it go? That’s how writing begins” – David Malouf 

Some of these quotes have cemented for me that if you want to write you need to do it every day; practice, make mistakes, start again and repeat. You don’t have to show anyone, just write. You can edit later, don’t be afraid. This again made me think of childhood when you give everything a go and there is no fear involved. You draw a picture of your family when you’re a child and it doesn’t matter what it looks like, you’ve done it. There is a freedom with childhood that is forgotten in adulthood. Bringing out that inner freedom and dismissing the fear that it won’t be good enough is key to writing. That’s what I have learnt. Just write.