229 books
—
516 voters


“To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.”
― Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story
― Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

“There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.”
― Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
― Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

“Ultimately you write alone. And ultimately you and you alone can judge your work. The judgment that a work is complete—this is what I meant to do, and I stand by it—can come only from the writer, and it can be made rightly only by a writer who’s learned to read her own work. Group criticism is great training for self-criticism. But until quite recently no writer had that training, and yet they learned what they needed. They learned it by doing it.”
― Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story
― Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

“That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professor's characteristic delight at not imparting information.”
― Either/Or
― Either/Or

“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
― The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
― The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Ash’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Ash’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Ash
Lists liked by Ash