When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
Interpretation
Writing fantasy brings immense joy and creativity, revealing endless possibilities.
In this quote, Laini Taylor expresses the profound joy she experienced when she began writing fantasy stories for young audiences. She likens her inspiration to discovering a limitless source of creativity, suggesting that writing can unlock an abundance of imaginative ideas and narratives that resonate deeply with both the writer and their readers.
In practice
In a speech at a literary festival, one could quote this to inspire young writers.
Itβs like losing gravity and falling into space β the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.
Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.
Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.
Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.
Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.
He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.
I knew that I was 'interesting' at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.
Humanity looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.
the look of the sky as the day's blue blood runs out of its cheek.
I've taken clowns into the war in Bosnia, the refugee camps of Kosovo, and none of those are any more important than clowning in a subway or an elevator or just walking down the street.
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