Writers On Thinking Quotes

“A person frequently writes in order to escape madness and crushing despondency by culling moral lesson and healing growth serum from personal experiences. Akin to riders on a storm, and a dog without a bone, we only come to understand our limits by enduring suffering. Only by deliberately confronting the essential facts of life does a person come to understand humanity. Without suffering the full brunt of love, sorrow, pain, illness, death, and accepting the relentless march of time a person never comes to know anything at all regarding the wonderful mystery of life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person can internalize their expressible thoughts and employ such ideas to modify human behavior.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writers do not always deliberately choose to write about a particular subject or develop select themes; rather the topic and the resultant work product frequently effuse from their pores. I work in an aimless fashion, similar to how a rudderless vessel steers no deliberate course. When the muse grabs us by the throat and makes us speak for it, we cannot question the wisdom behind the message generated by isolated sentences and paragraphs, elect to decipher sequestered ideas, or equivocate with the emotive utterings made while standing alone in the coldness of the night. All we can do is hold a lantern up to the self and take dictation. Later when our muse slumbers, we can evaluate the written scribbling for the resultant collective punch.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“We each sketch the story of our lives. We tell other people whom we have become by making decisions how we carry out our daily affairs, how we confront personal crisis, and when we extend comfort to other people. By talking about our secret dreams, we reveal who we hope to become. Writing changes us. A sentence on paper reflects not only who we now are, but it also exposes who we used to be.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Each act of writing represents a separate lock of the author’s tissue and all serious piecework folds into an ongoing anthology. A writer’s portfolio is comprised of interlocking ideas that are in a constant state of change. A writer’s ideas gradually reflect their current mental and spiritual composition and a writer’s way of living reflects the progression of their ideas. Each written version of a person’s life stands as mental testament of who the author was at a given moment in time. Just as we cannot sum up a person’s life with an isolated snapshot, truly to understand who a writer was we must read his or her entire body of work. No single work of writing tells us who the writer was. The compilation of a writer’s scripts defines the shady author, even if some of these works overtake, correct, or contradict previous efforts. Who we are is the summation of who we were as a child, teenager, young adult, in middle age, and as an elder. Only by viewing a person in successive stages do we truly comprehend them. Only by reading the oeuvre of an author, do we appreciate the writer’s ultimate act of creation. Only by reading a person’s obituary do we come to know what their living Magnus opus stood for.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The human mind is a product of nature. Resembling other forms of nature, does it follow an ancient code by adhering to universal rules of structure, time, and rhythm? Does the human mind establish through training and education its own pulse, tempo, pace, and lilt? Does reading allow us to witness the rhythm, beat, and intonation of other people’s minds? Does writing allow us to develop, monitor, and train the pulsating pulse of our own surfing mental cadence? Does reading enable us to see the groundswell of our own life refracted through a prism of other people’s storm of words? Does reading depict the upsurge of images and thoughts of a working mind, which casement frames humankind? Does writing spur us to scrutinize the indistinct pictures taken by the viewfinder submerged in our own minds? Does inspired writing draw out of us what composed material binders the structures of our multi-dimensional mind?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A writer’s life bleeds into his or her work. Autobiographical writing demands that a historical junky drain their inky plasma onto the parchment of his or her choice. First-person writing enables us to entomb a living person by writing in a posthumous fashion. Each person must design their own obituary, after all, the looped sentences that composes our life story is the type of art that we all can invariable participate.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing is a form of painting with words. Artists of every genre seek to convey every aspect of being, but some internal scenery proves impossible to recreate with word pictures. Writers and poets, past and present, seem to be obsessed with what it means to die, and perpetually haunted by actively imagining how to destroy their own being. Perchance this morbid fascination with eternal silence is because death is the one event that remains outside their ability ever accurately to paint with words.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Some souls are connected to an invisible thread,
Beyond this world, they exist in their own Universe.”
― Sumit Rai

“I am no longer content to live in the prison of the self and have begun reading and writing in order to experience a larger version of reality by seeing the world through the eyes of a thousand people.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Reflecting on the past while living in the present, we make decisions that will reverberate in the future. Our daily actions, thought patterns, and the concepts we choose to cherish will create the paradigmatic structure of our life story; our collective decision-making determines our final manifestation.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing evidences a contrarian mind at work. Writing is reflective of a mind’s evolving picture book. Each sentence forms part of a collage charting the meanderings of a mind unraveling. Writing represents drawing and quartering a mind. No wonder writing is an exercise of sheer torment. Only the exhaustive is truly fascinating. All worthwhile writing must be dangerous for the author if its concussive impact is to serve as a catalyst for change. Stories designed solely to shock are phony and, therefore, remain unconvincing since they fail to reveal a transformative philosophy. Unless we feel a strong connection to the story, a book is merely cheap talk. Transformative stories must surprise both the author and the reader by capturing ineffable feelings that exist beyond words.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Artistic license, also known poetic license, narrative license, and licentiate poetical, is a colloquial term (employed occasionally as a euphemism), which denotes a license to distort the facts, alter the conventions of grammar or language, or reword pre-existing text by an artist in the name of art. Liberal usage of an artistic license to restructure basic facts can result because of conscious or unconscious acts. Artistic embellishment or misrepresentation of the facts and distortion or alteration of the compositional text frequently is the by-product of both intentional and unintentional additions and omissions. An artistic license, employed at an artist’s discretion to fill in details or gloss over factual and historical gaps, raises some ethical issues. Many stories retold verbatim would bore an audience or require inordinate time and resources to reenact, describe, and view. A dramatic license eliminates mundane details and tedious facts, spruces up the picturesque background, and glamorizes the characters’ temperament and action scenes. Is it wrong to be inventive with the facts? What degree of embroidery of a series of events and the characters’ mannerisms and attributes is acceptable? How can anyone paste together a set of facts into an interesting or compelling narrative that has literary value without engaging in some creative organization to enhance the theatrical retelling and to create juxtaposition of ideas and values?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“When looking back on our lives, it is difficult objectively to evaluate our actions. When retelling our story, it is challenging to achieve balanced journalism. It is understandable why we might be inclined to overemphasize nostalgic feelings of happiness, glamorize stretches of childhood or other periods where life was rather uncomplicated, while assigning a disproportionate amount of anxiety to rougher periods of life. When we create strong, joyous memories, we preserve cherished feelings in the present. By assigning selective pleasant memories to the past, we create a homey place where we can return to visit. Fondness for nostalgic memories provides a buffer from existential threat, improves mood, combats loneliness, increases social consecutiveness, and enhances self-regard.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing is an engagement with the text and with the author’s enigmatic thoughts. Our words strung together eventually cause us to change, giving light to the new language and colorful pallet of our soul.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The laws that govern the universe also reveal it. Likewise, the way that we think unmasks us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Self-identity depends upon our manner of apprehending the world. Life for me is primarily about distilling patterns, attempting to sift between the ordinary and extraordinary events of daily of life in order to weave a mosaic that defines and clarifies the reasons behind why and how I live.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Language is a tool that allows us to express our thoughts. We use mechanisms of language including oral storytelling and indicative writing to depict a storehouse of evocative images. Language links our mind’s tawny memory and blooming imagination to the world. Storytelling connects each of us to the consciousness of other people who inhabit this planet.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A myriad of reasons contribute to writer’s block including anxiety, neurological impediments associated with the fight or flight concept, life changes of the writer, fear of rejection, fatigue, illness, sleep deprivation, mood disorders, drug or alcohol abuse, lack of inspiration, distraction by pressing events, and other diversionary interests.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The rewards generated from writing materialize at all stages of the work. Simply spending time organizing a person’s thoughts is edifying. Revising thoughts lead to clarification of conflicting thoughts and greater precision of thought. Finishing a piece of writing about hurtful personal experiences allows a person to examine it for everything that the writer learned.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“None of our written thoughts is the final word. Part of the value of writing is to allow a person to subsequently evaluate and modify their thinking patterns.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The work of the artist is to depict humankind and nature for how it actually is. Life as well as the written words of many learned writers teaches us about the world. We develop an orderly and differentiated system of personal consciousness by responding to the world, organizing, and integrating our accumulated knowledge gained via evocative personal experiences and through reading the shared thoughts of writers, philosophers, scientists, and other erudite thinkers.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The text of a person’s writing reveals flaws in their thinking patterns, imperfections in personal character, and lack of acumen and academic skills.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“No other writer tells a story so well and with so much profound philosophy as Haruki Murakami does!”
― Avijeet Das

“I hope to address and satisfactorily answer a number of issues throughout this scroll, namely, how I should elect to live out the remainder of my life. What qualities should I incorporate into my personhood and what noxious characteristics must I jettison from an evolving personal character? Questions that establish the spine of this scroll include does a person need the bookends of both faith and hope to bracket personal survival? Should I take a vow of poverty, chastity, and public service, and seek to live an honorable life based upon the principles of loyalty and courage? Must a person clasp vivid dreams close to their heart? Must a person stalk their personal calling with all their ferocity and resolve to hang onto the slender stalk of wispy wishes with all their might? Alternatively, should a person resolve to accept a life free from all forms of wanting? Can I discover a way to live in a supple way? Should I invest diminishing personal resources into self-discovery? Should I intensely search out the tenderest spot in my being? Do I dare plunge into the affectionate pulse that fills my innermost cavities with glowing warmth towards humanity? Given that death is inevitable, should I disdain failure, because how can anyone fail at living while pursuing the beam cast by the interior flash of their incandescent light? While many of these questions might prove elusive or unanswerable, the act of questioning has independent value.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Can the act of narrative writing alter the writer’s mental alignment and will an honest chronicle and extended effort at seeking answers to a vexatious series of pending personal questions eventually place the author on an even keel? What other motive, good or evil, could possibly cause an essayist to write in such a torrid manner? With each line that I write, I beg to stop. The lines just keep tumbling out. Is there no end to this nightmarish experience of examination and reexamination? Is there no relief in sight to this modest attempt to form my storyline into an intelligible quest? Many days of writing go nowhere; blank pages replicate the blandness of life, whereas other days I sense progress towards an indiscernible and undefinable goal. If I write long enough, what will I finally discover gazing back at me?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person might reasonably inquire if it is worthwhile to engage in an exhaustive narrative self-examination in order to instigate transformation of the self. Is it a sound allocation of personal resources to take myself to task on paper? Without structured change, I will repeat past mistakes, which is the ultimate definition of insanity. Before unwittingly commencing a blinkered journey through life, I need to reevaluate my operating schema that led me to the brink of self-destruction. I must initiate a reassessment of my philosophy for living by first understanding how my flawed assumptions regarding how to achieve a worthy life misled me. Although there are many methods to engineering a purposeful restructuring of a person’s ethical system, I elected to use writing as a method to incite a transformative learning experience. A person cannot write in a curative manner until one endures living an examined life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person of average intelligence is capable of learning useful life lessons through the act of self-examination.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I write not to justify a portfolio of personal failures. I do not seek to moralize or cast blame for my follies and catastrophes upon other people. I do not seek to malign other persons when documenting a series of unpleasant personal encounters in an unyielding society. I desire to overcome myself. I write in an attempt to alter my worldview, calm the soul, find serenity, extinguish hatred, and discover those elementary feelings of wellbeing which subsist permanently in humankind, which are independent of culture, race, class, and time. I write in an effort to discover the moral sublimity underlying existence. I write in order to understand myself and to transfigure myself. Writing is my attempt to rise beyond the facileness of my prior existence. I write in an effort to transcend the prodigious pain of living a profligate life. I write in an attempt to transmute my personage from that of an ordinary toad who despises all of his visible warts. I write in an attempt to decipher how to overcome a penchant for personal aggressiveness and brutality and become kind and gentle. I write in an attempt to discover how I can become a wise person who courageously faces the obstacles of life and exhibits grace and poise in the horror of his blackest days. I write to create an artifact of an intact and pacific persona.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Each day I attempt to establish a conjugated ring of reasons to rise tomorrow. Each day I seek to engage in some audible act of faith reaffirming a spiritual warrior’s commitment to living. Each day when engaged in investigative writing, I seek to perform some testimonial act that will lead me towards achieving desirable, premeditated change. Each day that I dabble with writing a deliberative memoir requires a scathing examination of how I lived. It also demands scrupulous assessment of how I want to live the remainder of an unspooling life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls