In July I got accepted to a course called Creative Writing: The short story in English. It has been going on for about two weeks now and so far I’m thrilled (except for less time to update the blog). It’s an online course from a Swedish university. The first part of the course is devoted to digging deeper into the structure of the short story as well as its history and classic authors. It’s not until the second part of the course we start to develop our own story. It’s amazing getting to read excellent short stories and discuss them with my teachers and fellow students. One assignment we had was to pick an interesting quote about writing fiction from a chapter in one of our course books. There were several wonderful and thoughtful quotes from famous authors in the chapter and I thought it would be worthwhile to share three of them. I will let them speak for themselves. They all resonate with me on a high level.

“For me a work of fiction only exists insofar as it affords me what I should bluntly call aesthetic bliss.”

Vladimir Nabokov

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

Franz Kafka

”A story is meaningful when it ruptures its own limits … which suddenly illuminates something far beyond that small and sometimes sordid anecdote which is being told”   

Julio Cortázar

Writing has been an important part of my life for several years now but so far I’ve mainly scribbled down random thoughts and poems whenever inspiration decided to knock on the door. I’m grateful for the opportunity to now explore my writing in a more organized way and to get helpful feedback. Writing doesn’t only help me getting my thoughts, poems and stories on paper, writing keeps me in balance. The course and this blog are very helpful incentives to write more, even on days when I don’t feel like it.  Do you have any favorite quotes about literature?

Best

P. Hydén