Crashlandia

The public has this big soft toad concept of Art, they see it as being done by nice scrubbed intelligent pretty folk with French, German or especially English accents. They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from being too alive in the middle of death. It comes from…new and awful places and the same old places.

- Charles Bukowski (via henrycharlesbukowski)

When I’m writing, I never feel lonely. In fact, I’m more likely to feel lonely, out-of-whack, when I’m not writing. This solitude is my natural state, and if I don’t have it, I lose my center. The only hope I have of writing something good is to protect my inner life, to coddle it, to treat it like the sensitive instrument it is. A violinist cares for her violin. A singer babies her voice. A sculptor finds just the right quarry. As writers, the difference is that our own selves—our internal landscapes—are our instrument. And so we must protect ourselves from that which throws us off course.

- Dani Shapiro (via literary-labyrinth)

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity. Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people’s salvation or learning. But that time is over.

- Audre Lorde (via shanaelmsford)

(Source: sisteroutsider)