I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
The fact that writers will go through so much to remain writers says something perhaps everything. It would be far easier (and nearly always more profitable) to become a real estate agent.
The function of art is to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.
If youre a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge and if hes good the older he gets the better he writes.
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can not fool all the people all of the time. Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Alexander K. McClure Abe Lincolns Yarns and Stories p. 184 (1904). Many quotation books have also attributed this to Lincoln with a variety of sources given. According to Roy R Basler ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol. 3 p. 81 (1953) Tradition has come to attribute to the Clinton [Illinois] speeches [September 2 1858] one of Lincolns most famous utterances ?You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. But he goes on to say that the epigram and any references to it have not been located in Surviving Lincoln documents. This remark has also been attributed to P. T. Barnum.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didnt require any.
The writer has a grudge against society which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex unrealized ambition unmitigated loneliness and a sense of local and global distress.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will more often than not accomplish the opposite.
Theres an element of contempt for meanings. You want to write outside the usual framework. You want to dare readers to make a commitment you know they cant make. Thats part of [crazed prose]. Theres also the sense of drowning in information and in the mass awareness of things. Everybody seems to know everything. Subjects surface and are totally exhausted in a matter of days. … The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths arent arrived at so easily that life is still full of mystery that it might be better for you dear reader if you went back to the living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you dont really want to be here. This writer is working against the age and so he feels some satisfaction at not being widely read. He is diminished by an audience.
Really the writer doesnt want success…. He knows he has a short span of life that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall Kilroy was here that somebody a hundred or a thousand years later will see.
I can write better than anybody who can write faster and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Each year it seems larger and more daunting mountains of text rise from the lush lowlands of visual reproduction.
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job like laying pipe.
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods just as I regard Michener as superior among junk writers.
The fact that writers will go through so much to remain writers says something perhaps everything. It would be far easier (and nearly always more profitable) to become a real estate agent.
The function of art is to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.
If youre a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge and if hes good the older he gets the better he writes.
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Dont pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.
A writer is like a bean plant he has his day and then becomes stringy.
They lard their lean books with the fat of others works.
He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.
If you would be a reader read; if a writer write.
A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it.
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.
God is love but get it in writing.
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can not fool all the people all of the time. Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Alexander K. McClure Abe Lincolns Yarns and Stories p. 184 (1904). Many quotation books have also attributed this to Lincoln with a variety of sources given. According to Roy R Basler ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol. 3 p. 81 (1953) Tradition has come to attribute to the Clinton [Illinois] speeches [September 2 1858] one of Lincolns most famous utterances ?You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. But he goes on to say that the epigram and any references to it have not been located in Surviving Lincoln documents. This remark has also been attributed to P. T. Barnum.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
Writing when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
I would venture to guess that Anon who wrote so many poems without signing them was often a woman.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didnt require any.
The writer has a grudge against society which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex unrealized ambition unmitigated loneliness and a sense of local and global distress.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will more often than not accomplish the opposite.
Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.
After being turned down by numerous publishers he decided to write for posterity.
If you cant annoy somebody theres little point in writing.
When I am dead I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet but his books were read.
Why do writers write? Because it isnt there.
When that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now only God understands it.
SCRIBBLER n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to ones own.
The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.
I take the view and always have that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought go to away and write a book about it.
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Those who write clearly have readers those who write obscurely have commentators.
To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what its about but the music the words make.
Better to write for yourself and have no public than write for the public and have no self.
Theres an element of contempt for meanings. You want to write outside the usual framework. You want to dare readers to make a commitment you know they cant make. Thats part of [crazed prose]. Theres also the sense of drowning in information and in the mass awareness of things. Everybody seems to know everything. Subjects surface and are totally exhausted in a matter of days. … The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths arent arrived at so easily that life is still full of mystery that it might be better for you dear reader if you went back to the living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you dont really want to be here. This writer is working against the age and so he feels some satisfaction at not being widely read. He is diminished by an audience.
I write when Im inspired and I see to it that Im inspired at nine oclock every morning.
Learn to write well or not to write at all.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
Really the writer doesnt want success…. He knows he has a short span of life that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall Kilroy was here that somebody a hundred or a thousand years later will see.
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
No tears in the writer no tears in the reader.
If a young writer can refrain from writing he shouldnt hesitate to do so.
To avoid criticism do nothing say nothing be nothing.