Quotes

Transcript

~~~~~ In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my de sk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write. Pearl S. Buck The best way to become more creative is to create nothing. Ilchi Lee An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. Juvenal Write against patterns. Go against the devils. Write what you never write. Lie. Validate what you don t validate. Indulge what you don t like. Wallow in it. Write t he opposite of what you always write, think, speak. Do everything against the gr ain! Deena Metzger If you would be a writer, first be a reader. Only through the assimilation of id eas, thoughts and philosophies can one begin to focus his own ideas, thoughts an d philosophies. Allan W. Eckert When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Hunter Thompson Life stand still here. Virginia Woolf The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. Confucius If there s a book you really want to read, but it hasn t been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison Half of being smart is knowing what you re dumb at. David Gerrold And your very flesh shall be a great poem. Walt Whitman I never quite know when I m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a par ty and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle o f a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he s ick? No, my wife says, he s writing something. James Thurber I love being a writer. What I can t stand is the paperwork. Peter De Vries Thinking is common to all. Heraclitus If you start to edit as you write, you are climbing into your editor self, the sel f that reads. You ve done plenty of reading, you don t need practise right now. Just write. Sandra Jensen Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. Oscar Wilde Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. E. L. Doctorow Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Let any clergyman try to preach the T ruth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his ch urch on his own bannister. Herman Melville When I wish to find out how good or how wicked anyone is, or what his thoughts a re at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible , in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts o r sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with th e expression. Edgar Allan Poe Put weather in. Joseph Hansen A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark. Dante Alighieri A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his gu ts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Charles Peguy A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Sidney Smith Reading and weeping opens the door to one s heart, but writing and weeping opens t he window to one s soul. M. K. Simmons An artist needn t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a w arm heart for his fellow men. Vincent Van Gogh No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. Van Wyck Brooks The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and fa miliar things new. Samuel Johnson The best style is the style you don t notice. Somerset Maugham There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. William Makepeace Thackeray Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He know s where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through ag ain. H. P. Lovecraft A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the tru th about its author. G.K. Chesterton This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great f orce. Dorothy Parker If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh then by all means paint, and Life itself is a quotation. Jorge Luis Borges Pay attention to the sound of words. Dave Wolverton Too often we opt for the decorative or the superficial, avoiding the beauty that Keats associated with truth the terrible beauty, the terrifying beauty that str ips us naked by its presence. Deena Metzger There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can t get a good story out of it. Lawrence Watt-Evans When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten. Meister Eckhart Writing is a dog s life, but the only life worth living. Gustave Flaubert The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detecto r. This is the writer s radar and all great writers have had it. Ernest Hemingway I started with all the handicaps, incapabilities, and helplessness. I didn t talk when I was twenty. I taught myself by the act of writing. Anaïs Nin A man s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. Ernest Hemingway Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to w hat you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant you just don t know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you d mapped out for your self. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon. Roger Zelazny Whenever they start talking foreign, observed John Harris, forecastleman, starboar d watch, you know they are at a stand, and that all is, as you might say, in a ma tter of speaking, up. Patrick O Brian It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I cou ldn t give it up because by that time I was too famous. Robert C. Benchley I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversi ve, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in. Anthony Trollope There s no money in poetry, but then there s no poetry in money either. Robert Graves Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T. S. Eliot I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things tha t lie buried deep in my heart. Anne Frank We are all of us failures, at least, the best of us are. James M. Barrie I follow the scent of falling rain and head for the place where it is darkest. I follow the lightning and draw near to the place where it strikes. Navaho Chant There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are . Somerset Maugham If I don t write to empty my mind, I go mad. Lord Byron That terrible mood of depression of whether it s any good or not is what is known as The Artist s Reward. Hemingway You can t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph . William Butler Yeats Most people won t realise that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprentic eship in it like anything else. Katherine Ann Porter First thought, best thought. Allen Ginsberg I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sl eep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those word s, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English. J.R.R. Tolkien Third thought, best thought. Frank Conroy The First Key is that which opens the dark prisons in which the Sulphur is shut up: this it is which knows how to extract the seed out of the body, and which fo rms the Stone of the philosophers by the conjunction of the spirit with the body of sulphur with mercury. Hermes has manifestly demonstrated the operation of th is First Key by these words: In the caverns of the metals there is hidden the St one, which is venerable, bright in colour, of mind sublime, and an open sea, the Sea of the Wise, in which they angle for their mysterious Fish. But the operati ons have a great deal of analogy one to another, to the end that those who have not the Lynx s eyes may pursue wrong, and be lost. Take heed, therefore, not to be deceived here; for it is a truth, that in each work the Wise Artist ought to di ssolve the body with the spirit; he must cut off the Raven s head, whiten the Blac k, and vivify the White; yet it is properly in the First operation that the Wise Artist cuts off the head of the Black Dragon and of the Raven. Hence, Hermes sa ys: What is born of the Crow is the beginning of this Art. Consider that it is b y separation of the black, foul, and stinking fume of the Blackest Black that ou r astral, white, and resplendent Stone is formed, which contains in its veins th e blood of the Pelican. It is at this First Purification of the Stone, and at th is shining whiteness, that the work of the First Key is ended. The Six Keys of Eudoxus You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. James M. Barrie Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it. Stanislaw Lem To look a fool is the secret of a wise man. Edgar Allen Poe Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balanc e. James Joyce Easy reading is damn hard writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. Stephen King Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to k eep. Scott Adams There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. P. L. Travers The hard part is getting to the top of page one. Tom Stoppard When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. Raymond Chandler It s not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of th e window. Wallace Stevens I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck. Aleister Crowley The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and th en spoiling it. Diane Johnson Resolve and thou art free. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me . Samuel Taylor Coleridge When people ask me how I know so much about mankind, they get a simple answer: e verything I know about men, I learned from me. Anton Chekhov Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is am azed at one s luck. Iris Murdoch The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the moder n novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. Oscar Wilde Writing is fighting. Muhammad Ali It is perfectly okay to write garbage C. J. Cherryh as long as you edit brilliantly. The effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spencer Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. E.L. Doctorow I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don t know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose. P. G. Wodehouse An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a per son, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice. Mark Twain Enter into the object, the whole of its delicate life, feeling as it feels. Shinkichi Takahashi The more skill you have, the further you are from what your deepest love wants. Rumi I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open li ttle by little into the full light. Sir Isaac Newton He thought and suffered a good deal, but lacked the resolution to dare, the firs t requsite of a practicioner. Lawrence Durrell The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you ve got it made. Jean Giraudoux Beauty is not caused. It is. Emily Dickinson We should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh . Friedrich Nietzsche I took a number of stories by popular writers as well as others by Maupassant, O . Henry, Stevenson, etc., and studied them carefully. Modifying what I learned o ver the next few years, I began to sell. Louis L Amour An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and v isible nowhere. Gustave Flaubert All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. Ralph Waldo Emerson Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence. Alice Walker This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in. Charles Dickens What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of acti on. Meister Eckhart Sometimes you have to go on when you don t feel like it, and sometimes you re doing good work when it feels like all you re managing to do is shovel shit from a sitti ng position. Stephen King How to write a poem? Rip your chest wide open and pour out whatever is crowded t here. Pirjo Zeylon To write must be an act devoid of will. The word, like the deep ocean current, h as to float to the surface of its own impulse. Henry Miller At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you kn ow what you want. Lao Tzu The secret is to start a story near the ending. Chris Offut Why don t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum. P. G. Wodehouse A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end t order. Jean Luc Godard but not necessarily in tha But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. Lord Byron God protects those he loves from worthless reading. J.K. Lavater Good writing is true writing. Hemingway Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don t feel I should be doing somet hing else. Gloria Steinem You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foo t upon his neck. William James I d like to have money. And I d like to be a good writer. These two can come togethe r, and I hope they will, but if that s too adorable, I d rather have money. Dorothy Parker Writing is turning one s worst moments into money. J. P. Donleavy The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat s mat is a sto ry. John le Carre I guess I don t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old. Benjamin Franklin No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slip pery and thought is viscous. Henry Brooks Adams Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree wh ich does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. Rainer Maria Rilke Write what comes up. Barbara Turner-Vesselago You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd. Flannery O Connor The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but on e who allows art to realize its supreme purpose through him. Carl Jung Most writers need to write. I write for money, really. If I won the lottery, I w ould never write another word. I would rather read. Clarissa Dickson Wright You must not come lightly to the blank page. Stephen King I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then we nt back and filled in the spaces. Harold Ross Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are on e. Heraclitus Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. J. Krishnamurti I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit. P. G. Wodehouse If you desire faith, then you have faith enough. Elizabeth Barrett Browning A poet never speaks directly, as to someone at the breakfast table. William Butler Yeats There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be. Doris Lessing There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a story teller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three storyteller, teacher, enchanter but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer. Vladimir Nabokov Outside of a dog, a man s best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it s too dark to r ead. Groucho Marx There is no need to imagine before you paint. Painting brings forth imagination. Kazuaki Tanahashi In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are im portant, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is. Geoffrey Cotterell If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel s heart beat, and we should die of that r oar which lies on the other side of silence. George Eliot I do not write for such dull elves as have not a deal of ingenuity themselves. Jane Austen Read poetry: it s quite hard. Don Paterson Write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writ ing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting. It will come if it is there and if you will let it come. Gertrude Stein The inner life strengthens the outer life, and vice versa. And it is stories tha t can unite these two precious worlds one mundane, the other mythic. Clarrissa Pinkola Estés Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. Lawrence Kasdan Nature is the art of God. Dante Alighieri I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I m one of the world s great rewriters . James A. Michener A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrot e. Mignon McLaughlin One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar. Helen Keller Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already. Marcus Aurelius In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word you have wri tten; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. Sydney Smith Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truth. Henry Miller Dream making emerges from a fundamental desire for intimacy, the love of creatio n, and the necessity to speak. Deena Metzger I feel that criticism is a letter to the public which the author, since it is no t directed to him, does not have to open and read. Rainer Maria Rilke Everywhere I go I m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don t stifle enough of them. There s many a bestseller that could have be en prevented by a good teacher. Flannery O Connor Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, con sider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It p roduces great praise to a lady to spell well. Thomas Jefferson to his daughter Lighting does occasionally strike and occasionally the result isn t a corpse. Tillie Olsen The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. Kahlil Gibran The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the differenc e between lightning and a lightning bug. Mark Twain Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observanc e, that you o erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o erdone is from th e purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image , and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. William Shakespeare I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human em otions. James Michener Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Carl Jung Make a list of everything you must not write about. Deena Metzger The road to ignorance is paved with good editors. George Bernard Shaw You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world. G.K. Chesterton It s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you we re born that way. Ernest Hemingway Intolerance is evidence of impotence. Aleister Crowley It s not plagiarism r would do. Uniek Swain I m recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious write Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard. Daphne Du Maurier A work of art has an author, and yet, when perfect, it has something which is es sentially anonymous about it. Simone Weil You thunder and lightning too much the reader ceases to get under the bed by and by. Mark Twain The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest ac tivity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writ er of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. Somerset Maugham A metaphor is like a simile. Unknown Life s enchanted cup sparkles near the brim. Lord Byron I turn sentences around. That s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it aro und. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I com e back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. Philip Roth If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick. William James I try to leave out the parts that people skip. Elmore Leonard An artist cannot do anything slovenly. Jane Austen Ice-cream is exquisite Voltaire what a pity it isn t illegal. I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either e ntirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering. Oscar Wilde I firmly believe every book was meant to be written. Marchette Chute If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. Lillian Hellman Nothing is made worse or better by praise. Marcus Aurelius Writer s block is simply a failure of ego. Norman Mailer Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphys ical one; it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rathe r than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lo wer worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself. Henry Miller If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn t brood. I d type a li ttle faster. Isaac Asimov No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no su rprise in the reader. Robert Frost Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life. Camille Paglia I am a galley slave to pen and ink. Honore de Balzac Thou art God, and I am God and all that groks is God. Robert Heinlein A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conce al it as well as she can. Jane Austen Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. Benjamin Franklin Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. William Wordsworth When you are describing, A shape or sound or tint; Don t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint. Lewis Carroll Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems. Philip Larkin I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there. H.G. Wells The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak. Frederich Nietzsche I never dare to write as funny as I can. Oliver Wendell Holmes If the sex scene doesn t make you want to do it been written right. Sloan Wilson whatever it is they re doing it hasn t Poetry: the best words in the best order. Samuel Taylor Coleridge The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and the n your story and then your story! Ford Madox Ford Sometimes I can better describe a person by another person s reaction. In a story in my first book, I couldn t think of a way to sufficiently describe the charisma of a certain boy, so the narrator says, I knew girls who saved his gum. Amy Hempel Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing. Joyce Carol Oates An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he d have somebody to look up to. Gene Fowler I m writing a book. I ve got the page numbers done. Stephen Wright All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. George Orwell I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Douglas Adams Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. Truman Capote One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. Hart Crane Writers are just people who have a whole lot on the inside that they need to get to the outside, with pen and paper as their preferred method of transport. Same with dancers, artists, and singers all the same urges with differing transporta tion. Graycie Harmon Now and again thousands of memories converge, harmonize, arrange themselves arou nd a central idea in a coherent form, and I write a story. Katherine Anne Porter Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more diffic ult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. Benjamin Franklin Why do writers write? Because it isn t there. Thomas Berger It s not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic. Eric A. Burns To accuse others for one s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accu se oneself shows that one s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor oth ers shows that one s education is complete. Epictetus I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. Franz Kafka Substitute damn every time you re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. Mark Twain An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imita te. Francois-Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand Adults are just obsolete children. Dr Seuss Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. Ezra Pound People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal. Herbert Spencer People on the outside think there s something magical about writing, that you go u p in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, a nd that s all there is to it. Harlan Ellison Bravery never goes out of fashion. William Makepeace Thackeray I ve been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can t remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only revie wer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I wo uld die drunk in the bottom of a ditch. Anton Chekhov True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn d to dance. Alexander Pope Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. Graycie Harmon Good things, when short, are twice as good. Gracián Art is the proper task of life. Friedrich Nietzsche You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. Ray Bradbury The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that it s not about me. It s about the cong regation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do . I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, I loved how you said , and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I neve r said. Reverend Sean Parker Dennison Great things are done when men and mountains meet. William Blake Don t use words too big for the subject. Don t say infinitely when you mean very ; other ise you ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite . C. S. Lewis What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. Logan Pearsall Smith I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it sho uld have. Leonardo da Vinci Poetry gave me back my voice. Maya Angelou Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and ar e shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writ ers and they do pretty much the same thing. Meg Chittenden When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes . Erasmus Wake the happy words. Theodore Roethke No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperamen t, except to think him overdoing everything. Zane Grey The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. Albert Camus I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of mu sical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn. P. G. Wodehouse Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. T. S. Eliot I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody s head. John Updike Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement. Jackson Pollock Every writer I know has trouble writing. Joseph Heller Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize. Henry James There s no such thing as writer s block. That was invented by people in California w ho couldn t write. Terry Pratchett Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest. The tree o f knowledge is not the tree of life. Lord Byron The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabakov Writers have lives, too. Doug Kurtz To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it s about, but the inner musi c the words make. Truman Capote Be obscure clearly. E.B. White If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is God is c rying. And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is Probabl y because of something you did. Jack Handy Writing well means never having to say, Jef Mallett I guess you had to be there. The end of a novel, like the end of a children s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums. Anthony Trollope But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel s whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening w hat is already written. That is finding the theme. Diane Johnson Avoid cliches like the plague. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. William Safire Don t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. Ray Bradbury Begin at the beginning, end: then stop. Lewis Carroll the King said, very gravely, and go on till you come to the Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. T. S. Eliot Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money. P. G. Wodehouse Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can ma ke such a thing really scare or ring true. That s because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible. H. P. Lovecraft If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me. William Shakespeare Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wanted to make a million doll ars, the best way would be to start his own religion. L. Ron Hubbard How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau Never throw up on an editor. Ellen Datlow A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident. W. Somerset Maugham Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Ever y time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. E.L. Doctorow Imagine an inner living dimension within yourself in which you create, in miniat ure psychic form, all the exterior conditions that you know. Jane Roberts Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. Sharon O Brien For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle . John Cheever A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone s feelings unintentionally. Oscar Wilde I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things. Benjamin Franklin The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. Muriel Rukeyser Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream? Homer Simpson No ideas but in things. William Carlos Williams Writing is its own reward. Henry Miller Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book. Ronald Reagan It s hard enough to write a good drama, it s much harder to write a good comedy, and it s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is. Jack Lemmon Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. Orson Scott Card Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intel ligence; he is just using his memory. Leonardo da Vinci Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. Francis Bacon Writing is a struggle against silence. Carlos Fuentes The best time for planning a book is while you re doing the dishes. Agatha Christie We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishin g things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself. Paracelsus After being turned down by numerous publishers, he had decided to write for Post erity. George Ade There is nothing fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass...unless you are an sf writer, in which case pretty soon you are viewing crab grass with suspici on. What are it s real motives? And who sent it here in the first place? It only l ooks like crab grass. That s what they want us to think it is. One day the crab gr ass suit will fall off and their true identity will be revealed. By then the Pen tagon will be full of crab grass and it ll be too late. The crab grass, or what we took to be crab grass, will dictate terms. Phillip K. Dick The story is not in the plot but in the telling. Ursula K. LeGuin The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance cannot in the opinion of His Majesty s G overnment be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude. Winston Churchill Novelists: fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helples sly through the chaos of his own existence. Fay Weldon A writer s duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world. Zadie Smith Invent your own mythology or be slave to another man s. William Blake Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. John Lennon Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? Walt Whitman A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. Karl Kraus I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it short er. Blaise Pascal Don t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you ll hav e to ram them down people s throats. Howard Aiken Getting ahead in a difficult profession singing, acting, writing, whatever requi res avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against stagger ing blows and unfair reversals. Sophia Loren Be curious, not judgmental. Walt Whitman Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering Woody Allen and it s all over much too soon. You must write for children in the same way as you do for adults, only better. Maxim Gorky I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a co mma. In the afternoon I put it back again. Oscar Wilde Of course the game is rigged. Don t let that stop you . Robert Heinlein if you don t play, you can t win I ve always said fantasy is sort of Terry Goodkind stealth philosophy . The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The read er, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. Ursula K. LeGuin A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addresse d envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. Ring Lardner There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn t be. He is too many people if he s any good. F. Scott Fitzgerald Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications. Fran Lebowitz Writing well is the best revenge. Dorothy Parker What I am saying, I suppose, is that you write as if everyone is dead. Then you face the music. I don t know any other way to keep the teeth sharp and the spirit alive. Lynn Freed I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper. Steve Martin To anyone capable of suspending for a moment the cavortings of the rational mind , of accepting myth for what it is not lie but the very veritable truth it needs no great inward effort to act upon such advice. It s a matter, merely, of listeni ng. P. L. Travers Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. Jane Austen Only great minds can afford a simple style. Stendhal Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those on e has had. Friedrich Nietzsche Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditoriu m of his skull. Rod Serling Tell the truth, but tell it slant. Emily Dickinson It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is anoth er kind of music. Ursula K. Le Guin Let us read and let us dance orld. Voltaire two amusements that will never do any harm to the w From the first words of a fairy story, we relax not because we are entertained b ut because we are in the presence of truthfulness. Deena Metzger Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words. Jonathan Swift I ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you di d, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. Charles Dickens Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fi re. Reggie Leach I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind to work some of those contradictions out for myself. Michel de Montaigne and Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. Anne McCaffrey I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothi ng about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertaining ly. Edgar Rice Burroughs There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. Z. N. Hurston An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. H.L. Mencken Writing is the flip side of sex Hunter S. Thompson it s good only when it s over. I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to s ay in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it. Lord Brabazon Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Sir Francis Bacon Less than an hour before, he had congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet. Clifford D. Simak I don t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they re dead. Samuel Goldwyn An artist is his own fault. John O Hara Somebody is a good dreamer. Pirjo Zeylon Touching your cap to the Squire may be damn bad for the Squire, but it s damn good for you. J.R.R. Tolkien There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer fo r her, or turn her into literature. Lawrence Durrell Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own langu age cannot be understood and appreciated. Thomas Bulfinch Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards. Lewis Carroll On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind o put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up. Terry Brooks t Words are the physicians of a mind diseased. Aeschylus A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. Samuel McChord Crothers Words so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how po tent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. Nathaniel Hawthorne They lard their lean books with the fat of others Robert Burton works. A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author s soul. Aldous Huxley Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is enough happine ss in life without having to go to books for it. Dorothy Parker Nature also forges man, now a gold man, now a silver man, now a fig man, now a b ean man. Paracelsus No one does anything from a single motive. Samuel Taylor Coleridge All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I my self deny it. H. L. Mencken The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense. Tom Clancy He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license. Milton Berle You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won t be able to take a brea k from being a writer. Stephen Leigh In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder a nd bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci, and the Renaiss ance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of dem ocracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. Orson Welles Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest. Christian Dior I m very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes. Francis Ford Coppola A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire What is a hero without love for mankind? Doris Lessing You taught me language and my profit on t is I know how to curse. William Shakespeare Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he ll eventually ma ke some kind of career for himself as writer. Ray Bradbury Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different i mmediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And y et it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one ma n seems nonsense to another. Hermann Hesse Why, sometimes I ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Lewis Carroll All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart. Carlos Castaneda He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon th e imagination and the heart. Washington Irving Write what you like; there is no other rule. O. Henry A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and fro m the reader the writer learns. P. L. Travers Anybody can make an easy deal, but only a true agent can sell a dog. Irving Swifty Lazar A man s errors are his portals of discovery. James Joyce At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must tra in himself in ruthless intolerance that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why i t is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don t think the tale nt makes much difference, whether you ve got it or not. William Faulkner Fire lives in the death of earth, air in the death of fire, water in the death o f air, and earth in the death of water. Heraclitus A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just begins to live that day. Emily Dickinson If it has horses and swords in it, it s a fantasy, unless it also has a rocketship in it, in which case it becomes science fiction. The only thing that ll turn a st ory with a rocketship in it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail. Debra Doyle Keep a diary and one day it ll keep you. Mae West Loafing is the most productive part of a writer s life. James Norman Hall The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. Joan Baez The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone s neurosis, and we d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunc h of happy chuckleheads. William Styron The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems. J. W. Goethe He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a se ed that will flower and come to fruition. Isaac Asimov The misuse of language induces evil in the soul. Socrates I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting. Gore Vidal The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire Anybody can have ideas the difficulty is to express them without squandering a q uire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. Mark Twain How do I know what I think, until I see what I say? E. M. Forster It is odd how the law always harps upon the unnaturalness of sodomy, observed Step hen. Though I know at least two judges who are paederasts; and of course barriste rs. Patrick O Brian You have to talk to the stone, and it has to talk to you. Ben Nighthorse Campbell You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain I feel happy to terrify kids. R. L. Stine The question isn t who is going to let me; it s who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of it s own accord. Nikolai Gogol I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart. Anne Frank Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. Nikos Kazantzakis He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears. Michel de Montaigne Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. William Makepeace Thackeray May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window an d kiss the night air. Franz Kafka Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before. Joseph Campbell Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Ernest Hemingway Writing is a fairly lonely business unless you invite people in to watch you do it, which is often distracting and then you have to ask them to leave. Marc Lawrence I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write no t outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else by the s ame name. Aldous Huxley A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Virginia Woolf The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Ch aos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. Ralph Waldo Emerson Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your des ire to make art. Tolerance for uncertainty is a prerequisite for succeeding. David Byles and Ted Orland Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. Catherine Drinker Bowen Writing is a product of silence. Carrie Latet Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, i ntroduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Goin g into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end that is what you must be abl e to attain. Rainer Maria Rilke I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55. Mark Twain There are many reasons why novelists write : a need to create an alternative world. John Fowles but they all have one thing in common We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. Kurt Vonnegut If you wait for inspiration, you re not a writer, but a waiter. Louis L Amour Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality. Nikos Kazantzakis Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire aroun d it. Anthony Burgess I don t have to have faith, I have experience. Joseph Campbell To go against sense, to go against reason, to deliberately deconstruct the world of grammar and thoughtful orderliness is, in effect, to destroy the world as we know it and allow something new to emerge. Grammar is, above all, a system of t hought and perception, the way the world is defined and primary relationships ar e perceived. Deena Metzger Big words are always punished. Sophocles Beware thoughts that come in the night. William Least Heat-Moon Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn t matter. I m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn t make us better, then what on earth i s it for? Alice Walker Observe, don t imitate. John M. Ford I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting mere tricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal f oreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously a cquired. Patrick O Brian The proper use of imagination can propel ideas in the direction you desire. Jane Roberts Being scared can keep a man from getting killed, and often makes a better fighte r of him. Louis L Amour I desired dragons with a profound desire. J.R.R. Tolkien In the aftermath of the crisis, tulip mania gave way to tulip-phobia. The profes sor of botany at Leyden, Evrard Forstius, was said to be so incensed by the flow er that he could not see a tulip without attacking it viciously with his stick. Edward Chancellor Should I lose my demons, wherefore my angels? Nathanial Hawthorne When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. William Butler Yeats Fear is excitement without the breath. Robert Heller Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully. Aristotle The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The harde st way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a g reat thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty. Pablo Neruda I still can t decide which is more fun Rex Stout reading or writing. Doughnuts. Is there anything they can t do? Homer Simpson From a technical point of view there are two essential things to solve or create when writing a novel. The first is the invention of the narrator. I think the n arrator is the most important character in a novel. In some cases this importanc e is obvious because the narrator is also a central figure, a central character in the novel. In other cases, the narrator is not a character, not a visible fig ure, but an invisible person whose creation is even more complicated and difficu lt than the creation of one of the characters. Mario Vargas Llosa Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by rea son. André Gide Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye. William Gibson A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. John le Carre You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens. Frederik Pohl You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it. Ursula K. LeGuin If you liked being a teenager, there s something really wrong with you. Stephen King I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat. Robertson Davies If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. Virginia Woolf A man who is a genius and doesn t know it, probably isn t. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Every artist joins a conversation that s been going on for generations, even mille nnia, before he or she joins the scene. John Barth Be anything you want to be, but don t be dull. Frank Robinson It is not down in any map; true places never are. Herman Melville Only self-educated is educated. Others are merely taught. Erno Paasilinna No tricks. Raymond Carver To write is, above all else, to construct a self. Deena Metzger There is in each of us an ongoing story. It contains our meaning and our destiny . And it goes on inevitably whether we pay attention to it or not. Al Kreinheder I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Henry David Thoreau The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his o wn deeds. Harold Hayes A writer s mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head. Ethel Wilson Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man s life, must place him in such a s ituation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible. Leo Tolstoy Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called up on to sit down and write. Fran Lebowitz My task is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel. It is, before all, to make you see. That and no more and it is everything. Joseph Conrad My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco , food, and a little whisky. William Faulkner History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. Winston Churchill I may as well tell you that if you are going about the place thinking things pre tty, you will never make a modern poet. Be poignant, man, be poignant! P. G. Wodehouse The pen is the tongue of the mind. Miguel de Cervantes Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end. Philip Larkin Following the creative is a path, but it is not a known path. Deena Metzger When a mighty tree is felled, a star falls from the sky. Before you cut down a m ahogany you should ask permission of the keeper of the forest, and you should as k permission of the keeper of the star. Chan K in To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. Louis L Amour Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. Joseph Campbell I have no mouth, and I must scream. Harlan Ellison When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; yo u see more in you than there was before. Clifton Fadiman Never let inexperience get in the way of ambition. Terry Josephson Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you thin k is particularly fine, strike it out. Samuel Johnson I don t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen Read, read, read. Read everything trash, classics, good and bad, and see how the y do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master . Read! You ll absorb it. Then write. William Faulkner Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. Anne Lamott The reality is more excellent than the report. Ralph Waldo Emerson If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn t matter a damn how you write. Somerset Maugham The Sibyl with raving mouth utters solemn, unadorned, unlovely words, but she re aches out over a thousand years with her voice because the god is in her. Heraclitus In a thousand words I can have the Lord s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln s Gettysb urg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that? Roy H. Williams Decide to examine the contents of your conscious mind. Jane Roberts We forget that what matters begins with the imagination. Terry Brooks Every activity of the creative process requires that we bring spirit into form, that we create a vessel ourselves or a work of art that can hold the spirit. Deena Metzger Via clear nature of mind and methods of words, the glows of meanings and direct perceptions: with these four kinds of excellent awareness all things are manifes t in views compassionate. Prajna Paramita In art economy is always beauty. Henry James No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger. Rainer Maria Rilke I like to write when I feel spiteful: it s like having a good sneeze. D.H. Lawrence The easiest thing to do on earth is not write. William Goldman Speak, that I may see thee. Ben Jonson This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me. Winnie the Pooh A blank piece of paper is God s way of telling us how hard it to be God. Sidney Sheldon Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh . Ecclesiastes Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you re a writ er. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff s worth, without pity, and de stroy most of it. Colette Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. Joseph Conrad The only time to believe any kind of rating is when it shows you at the top. Bob Hope He who limps is still walking. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that want s help from us. Rainer Maria Rilke A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. Dr Samuel Johnson A book is like a man clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. Fo r every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun. John Steinbeck Talent is a long patience. Gustave Flaubert He who Works with his Hands, is a Laborer. He who Works with his Hands and his Head is a Craftsman. He who Works with his Hands, his Head, and his Heart is an Artist. Seneca The archetypal situation and the mythic realm hover around the perimeters of sto ry. Deena Metzger A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword. Robert Burton Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it. Garrison Keillor If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. Edgar Rice Burroughs First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him. Ray Bradbury The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. Ayn Rand I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk. Hortense Calisher Mystery is the basic element of all works of art. Luis Buñuel Words are a lens to focus one s mind. Ayn Rand It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence . Erasmus Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one s own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one s pen. Leo Tolstoy The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interr upted each night, it is one single notation. Elias Canetti My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of c ommitting suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meets with a murderer. Nathaniel Hawthorne I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer t hing Life is! So unlike anything else, don t you know, if you see what I mean. P. G. Wodehouse Writers speak stench. Franz Kafka Deep writing comes from our bodies, from our breath, and from our ability to rem ain solid in the places that scare us. Laraine Herring What I would say to a young person trying to become a writer is Don t. It won t make any difference because they ll do it anyway, but they really shouldn t. Robert Burton The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. Walter Bagehot When the sun hit that bonnet just right, I could swear I saw angels in her hair. Billy-Bob Hornwinkle The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on tha t thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things. Ralph Waldo Emerson The clothes make the man. Naked people contribute little or nothing to society. Mark Twain It s just my smart ass gorglings. Pirjo Zeylon Editing is Human, free-writing Divine! Milli Thornton I am so clever that sometimes I don t understand a single word of what I am saying . Oscar Wilde One extends one s limits only by exceeding them. M. Scott Peck Comedy has to be done en clair. You can t blunt the edge of wit or the point of sa tire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediatel y clear. James Thurber Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long. Ogden Nash If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought. Dante Alighieri The best things in life aren t things. Art Buchwald I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundit s. It is the style of all the writers whose tendency is to make their language c onvey more than they mean to and more than they feel. It is the style of most ar tists and all humbug. Cyril Connolly I am two with nature. Woody Allen Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows u p. Pablo Picasso Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The las t phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you ki ll the monster and fling him out to the public. Winston Churchill The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. Rainer Maria Rilke There are two kinds of light res. James Thurber the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscu I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painti ng has a life of its own. Jackson Pollock The best stories don t come from good vs. bad but from good vs. good. Leo Tolstoy The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, moulded and constructed in a personal form and an original manner. Goethe One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stu ck between her lower left molars, and who couldn t get it out all day long. I thou ght that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than de ntal floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. Jules Renard Too clever is dumb. Ogden Nash All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood. Rainer Maria Rilke Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch. Francis Bacon He had the look of one who had drained the cup of life and found a dead beetle a t the bottom. P. G. Wodehouse There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception. James Thurber If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning. Robert Louis Stevenson Every secret of a writer s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of hi s mind is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words. Amy Lowell I have only to let myself go! So I have said all my life, yet I have never fully done it. Henry James These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thou sands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the m oonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fish es which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet o f line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feel ing a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extr emity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, wh en your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Natur e again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook. Henry David Thoreau It s what you learn after you know it all that counts. John Wooden Spinning straw into gold is not just a pretty phrase or an image from a fanciful tale but is a real activity. Deena Metzger A new character has come on the scene. I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, but there he came walking through the woods of Ithilien. J.R.R. Tolkien I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically. James Herriot I haven t much opinion of words. They re apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that s what I say. Ellen Glasgow We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. Henry David Thoreau I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a grea t whale to go downstairs five miles or more. Herman Melville We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his act ions. Isaac Bashevis Singer Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched s ort of life as paradise. Adolph Hitler I hope that after I die, people will say of me: ney. Jack Handy That guy sure owed me a lot of mo Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. Mark Twain A story is: the king died, the queen died. A plot is: the king died, the queen d ied of grief. E. M. Forster How every fool can play upon the word! William Shakespeare Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself. James Stephen If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you can t tell it about other people. Virginia Woolf Thinking is linking. P. L. Travers The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything. Voltaire There are three necessary elements in a story exposition, development, and drama . Exposition we may illustrate as John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little to wn of X ; development as One day Mrs Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man ; and drama as You will do nothing of the kind, he said. Frank O Connor Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable tool, and therefore are mos t economical in its use. Mark Twain Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowh ere do they touch upon absolute truth. Friedrich Nietzsche A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. Franz Kafka The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel. James Thurber A book is so much a part of oneself that in delivering it to the public one feel s as if one were pushing one s own child out into the traffic. Quentin Bell A fool is agog at every word. Heraclitus In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Ursula K. Le Guin A ship is safe in harbor, but that s not what ships are for. John Shedd There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to d eal with what is most difficult. Rainer Maria Rilke It should consist of short, sharply focused sentences, each of which is a whole scene in itself. Theodore Sturgeon I may therefore venture to say that the air of reality seems to me to be the sup reme virtue of the novel the merit upon which all its other merits hopelessly an d submissively depend. The cultivation of this success, the study of this exquis ite process, form, to my taste, the beginning and the end of the art of the nove list. Henry James Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, a teac her, an acquaintance, or a stranger. Franklin Jones You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform. Horace I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance harp, vindictive glance. James Thurber a s He felt about books as doctors feel about medicines, or managers about plays ical, but hopeful. Rose Macaulay cyn A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. Lao Tzu What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. Michel Foucault You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what s burning inside y ou. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. Arthur Polotnik I don t believe in writers block. Plumbers don t get plumbers block. Why should writin g be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working? Philip Pullman Literature is all, or mostly, about sex. Anthony Burgess The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. Linus Pauling Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural e nemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking. Jessamyn West Study the rules so that you won t beat yourself by not knowing something. Babe Didricksen Zaharias There is one story and one story only. Robert Graves When my horse is running good, I don t stop to give him sugar. William Faulkner The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure. M.C. Escher Always write with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. C. S. Lewis I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a w riter never complains, never explains and never disdains. James A. Michener I do like a little romance, just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys . Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no go od at all, if you haven t got that. Anthony Trollope Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. Carl Jung It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. Douglas Adams His words were simple words enough And yet he used them so That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low. James Russell Lowell And by the way, everything in life is writable if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-d oubt. Sylvia Plath The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabakov Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer. John O Hara Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. William Butler Yeats A writer s duty is to register what it is like to be in the world. Zadie Smith The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. Ralph Waldo Emerson The beginning is always today. Mary Wollstonecraft I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobo dy calls. Henry David Thoreau I do not think I have ever prayed in words. I pray in conscious desire. I pray i n concepts concepts of whole ideas, not parts. I never go to sleep at night with out consciously thinking that kind of prayer in which I express desire in whole ideas of what my day for the morrow must be. I do not weaken my prayer by trying to find words for it. I keep my desire strong by not thus dividing it into word s or in parts. My prayers are communions, not conversations. Walter Russell Nothing builds confidence like accomplishment. Thomas Carlyle The Malabar Caves represented an area in which concentration can take place. A c avity. Something to focus everything up: to engender an event like an egg. E. M. Forster There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. Anthony Trollope To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. Emily Dickinson The words of truth are always paradoxical. Lao Tzu The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. G. K. Chesterton Do you know, Peter asked, n to the stories. James M. Barrie why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to liste In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it t eaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Percy Bysshe Shelley The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame. J P Donleavy The beautiful part of writing is that you don t have to get it right the first tim e, unlike, say, brain surgery. Robert Cormier Contact with the larger story is imperative in order to gain wisdom and to resto re those parts of ourselves that become amputated in a secular society. Deena Metzger I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write. John D. MacDonald Everything changes when you change. Jim Rohn The poet is a good citizen turned inside out. William Butler Yeats Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another. Elizabeth Bowen And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, a nd a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born. Jack Kerouac When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expect ed to see an author and find a man. Blaise Pascal Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all. Katherine Mansfield Start early and work hard. A writer s apprenticeship usually involves writing a mi llion words (which are then discarded) before he s almost ready to begin. That tak es a while. David Eddings You must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you brea k through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams. Gardner Dozois I have written a great many stories and I still don t know how to go about it exce pt to write it and take my chances. John Steinbeck The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. Benjamin Disraeli I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tre ad softly because you tread on my dreams. William Butler Yeats Insanity is the illusion you are wrong. Verber Quimply The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevita bly confines himself within ancient limits. Nathaniel Hawthorne Even if you re on the right track, you ll get run over if you just sit there. Will Rogers A professional writer is an amateur who didn t quit. Richard Bach The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can t read them. Mark Twain Save me the first dance in your dreams tonight. Frank Sinatra It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as prai sed. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends. Samuel Johnson Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you el iminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow r emain. Elie Wiesel To see things in the seed, that is genius. Lao Tzu The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the hum orist makes fun of himself. James Thurber I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. Rainer Maria Rilke I could just do the whole thing in one day but sadly my character had gone to be d at the end of the last scene. Sandra Jensen The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisf action. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. Mark Twain There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily. Anthony Trollope When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their c haracters want something right away even if it s only a glass of water. Kurt Vonnegut The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict. James Frey That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one. Hermes Trismegistus Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. William Butler Yeats All the information you need can be given in dialogue. Elmore Leonard Anyone who believes you can t change history has never tried to write his memoirs. David Ben Gurion There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect as a period placed at just the right moment. Isaac Babel All my life I ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. Ernest Hemingway Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge. Kahlil Gibran Read almost any newspaper interview, and you ll conclude that the dialogue of real people is more stilted and implausible than the dialogue of invented characters . Trying to make real people sound real on the page is necessarily an exercise i n impressionism. Nothing teaches one the subtleties of punctuation so well as an attempt to take a skein of actual speech and restore to it the pauses, ellipses , switches of tone and speed, that it had in life. Jonathan Raban It is all very well to write books, but can you wiggle your ears? James M. Barrie There is creative reading as well as creative writing. Ralph Waldo Emerson I suppose I m one of those fellows my father always warned me against. P. G. Wodehouse Art is elimination of the unnecessary. Waldo Salt Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and w hy they were in the plane to begin with. Nancy Ann Dibble A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. Henrik Ibsen When the book comes out it may hurt you hurt me first. James Baldwin but in order for me to do it, it had to The only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you. Somerset Maugham Just because I don t care doesn t mean I don t understand. Homer Simpson At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dream ers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any les s magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he h as tried writing at night. H. P. Lovecraft Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. Norman Mailer Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they th ink other folks think they think. Ethan Hubbard When it came to my art, I went my own way and did not follow the trends. Frank Frazetta When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees. Abraham Lincoln If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it. Art Buchwald Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. Henry David Thoreau Kindness in words creates confidence. Lao Tzu Think before you speak, is criticism s motto; speak before you think is creation s. E. M. Forster If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following on e it should be fired. Otherwise don t put it there. Anton Chekhov Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I ll meet you th ere. Rumi Whatever fortune brings, don t be afraid of doing things. Herman Melville It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope. Ursula K. Le Guin There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid. Katherine Paterson So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that s al ive in your heart. That s the one you have to write. Lurleen McDaniel How does one get to be a bit of a bee? P. L. Travers You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Jane Roberts I was a free man in Paris. Joni Mitchell All great truths begin as blasphemies. G. B. Shaw The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. Omar Khayyam People die, but books never die. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. Albert Einstein The blank page gives the right to dream. Gaston Bachelard The poet is the one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive. Anaïs Nin A year from now you ll wish you had started today. Karen Lamb In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. T. S. Eliot Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame! William Butler Yeats We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Thomas Paine Please, she whispered as she opened the book, hour or so, please take me far, far away. Cornelia Funke please get me out of here just for an A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing: up down up down. Virginia Woolf A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. Bill Barich Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. John Steinbeck As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Geniu s; which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Pro verbs. William Blake Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. H. P. Lovecraft I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. Jack Kerouac It takes an awful long time to not write a book. Douglas Adams Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. Edward Gibbon To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. Robert A. Heinlein and dull fantasy Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. Carl Jung Nothing will work unless you do. Maya Angelou The writer s only responsibility is to his art. William Faulkner The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your con trol. Ogden Nash The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. William Blake Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall. To be strict without being t oo self-excoriating. Not stopping too often to think it s going well (or not too b adly), simply to keep rowing along. Susan Sontag When in doubt, go to your where. Viola Spolin A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Ralph Waldo Emerson There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation. James Thurber Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men. Confucius Hold a book in your hand and you re a pilgrim at the gates of a new city. Hebrew Saying I wrote no words this day. Lynda Carnes Let the readers do some of the work themselves. Fyodor Dostoyevsky I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew. Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew. J.R.R. Tolkien The use of point of view is to bring the reader into immediate and continuous co ntact with the heart of the story and sustain him there. Tom Jenks When I read it, I don t wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write. Norman Mailer I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. Erma Bombeck I love to doubt as well as know. Dante Alighieri To finish is a sadness to a writer a little death. He puts the last word down an d it is done. But it isn t really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer be hind, for no story is ever done. John Steinbeck The loveship of her Guardian was all she knew of men. Bernice Ellis A child of three once said to me, I am two boys, Goodly and Badly. Alas, too young for this! I thought, but at the same time recalled that truth requires us to be young, no matter what our age. And then came the faltering, anxious question Whi ch do you like best? I knew the answer, and all the breadth and depth of it, but had to appear to pay it mind. If I chose Goodly, then Badly would be in the wild erness, alone with his badliness and lost. If Badly, then Goodly would be in the same plight, alone with his goodliness. Joy and woe are woven fine/A clothing fo r the soul divine. To tell you the truth, I said gravely, I like them both the same. The look of anxiety turned to relief and a trustful hand met mine. Pamela Travers Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you ve got to say, and say it hot. D. H. Lawrence As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it im pending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. Virginia Woolf The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys. Astrid Weber Don t plan anything. Write what comes up. Give all the details. Go fearward. Don t edit. Barbara Turner-Vesselago Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? A. A. Milne If a book is not alive in the writer s mind, it is as dead as year-old horse-shit. Stephen King Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I ll tell you a story. F. Scott Fitzgerald I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain t op, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten, happy, absorbed and quietl y putting one bead on after another. Brenda Ueland A story isn t about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time. W. D. Wetherell The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do. Donald Barthelme I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so muc h aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart s history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self-assertion of youth. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Problems in writing can come unknotted in a miraculous way after a nap. I go to sleep with the problem, and wake up with the answer. Patricia Highsmith All good ideas arrive by chance. Max Ernst Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can t forgive. Salman Rushdie Sometimes if I m stuck for a word I just put X e to edit. Sandra Jensen easy to search for later when I com There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated th rough you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any othe r medium and it will be lost. It is not your business to determine how good it i s nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. Martha Graham Liberty doesn t work as well in practice as it does in speeches. Will Rogers Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all th e years we have lived. Helen Keller You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it s going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children. Madeleine L Engle We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark. H. P. Lovecraft If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. Abraham Lincoln Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round. William Butler Yeats There s nothing more empty than a life devoted to leisure. George Hamilton Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. Ralph Waldo Emerson Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style. Matthew Arnold I think taste is a social concept, not an artistic one. Our reading life is too sh ort for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another s bra in in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with o urselves. John Updike Always behave as though tomorrow is the day. Buck Henry You can t try to do things; you simply must do them. Ray Bradbury Something was swinging from a slightly bowed branch. Michelle Bidwell You can do whatever you want through imagination and characters when writing fic tion. Anything. Michael Swerdloff Plain words are special to me. Bernice Ellis I am starting to fall in love with Quinlan. It s going to suck when I have to kill him. Leigh-Anne Tyson Says the God of Art: I shall give you hunger, and pain, and sleepless nights. Al so beauty, and satisfactions known to few, and glimpses of the heavenly life. No ne of these you shall have continually, and of their comings and goings you shal l not be foretold. Howard Lindsay I m dying to get into some action. Sandra Jensen Every time I sit down, someone else is speaking. Jody Strimling-Muchow Creativity means that I access. Jeanne Beauchamp Adwani Nature never breaks her own laws. Leonardo da Vinci The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascina tion. H. P. Lovecraft Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never yet been set up a stat ue in honor of a critic. Jean Sibelius Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my Muse to me, look to thy heart and write. Sir Philip Sidney I am bigger than the spider. Bernice Ellis The story will only go as far as the author will allow it. Michael Swerdloff Fiction is about stuff that s screwed up. Nancy Kress Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment. James Joyce I am a man, and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. D.H. Lawrence I m trying not to wonder because if I wonder too much, doubt may take over and the n I ll never get it done. Andrea Mauk Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory spor t. George V. Higgins Exuberance is beauty. William Blake I want to leap into a new future for myself. Bernice Ellis Forget absolutely everything you thought you were or are going to do. Just write whatever and count the words. Gabriele Stehle He was white and shaken, like a dry martini. P. G. Wodehouse Love is what you ve been through with somebody. James Thurber It s about keeping technique from interrupting the creative process. Kellie Hall Swallowing All whole, cleansing through Perfection, I hear the grass grow, I am One with the rodent s heartbeat. In the bliss of Eleven, I die of the roar which l ies on the other side of silence, becoming One with that Silence, Om. Claire Born Go for dialogue. Sandra Jensen Probably morning is best for me. Jenni Sulkow I tumble together to a mound, unable to concern myself. Pirjo Zeylon Who knows what spawn can spring from such lunatic loins of evil? Herbunger Vladstaff A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me. Abraham Lincoln Think where man s glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such frien ds. William Butler Yeats Standing at the edge of the cliff and helping others leap is easier than leaping . Michael Swerdloff It s like the novel is writing itself. Jody Strimling-Muchow Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. E.L. Doctorow I am an actor at heart. I just acted out my story and then wrote it down. Mame Burkett Can we really heal and forgive if we don t see both roles in a play as one? Pirjo Zeylon How you do anything is how you do everything. Zen proverb They just discovered the windshield was covered in butterfly wings. Leigh-Anne Tyson Chronology plays no part in what I ve written to date. Lindsay McLeod Espinoza Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Jules Renard The trade of authorship is a violent and indestructible obsession. George Sand One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocab ulary, looking for long words because you re maybe a little bit ashamed of your sh ort ones. Stephen King I want my novel. Bernice Ellis If I get out of the way, much happens. Michael Swerdloff English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education s it s sheer luck, like getting across the street. E. B. White sometime Pot of tea check. Raining outside check. Leigh-Anne Tyson I m not surprised that you are falling in love with Mr. Big. Michelle Bidwell One word at a time. That s the only way to write the elephant. Jody Strimling-Muchow Keep in mind that the person to write for is yourself. Tell the story that you m ost desperately want to read. Susan Isaacs The rule of the writer is not to say what we can say but what we are unable to s ay. Anaïs Nin I always write a good first line, but I have trouble in writing the others. Molière I began to love her in my dreams. Michelle Bidwell The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche If you want to be successful, it s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing. Will Rogers Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for an echo. Don Marquis A man is a writer if all his words are strung in definite sentence sounds. Marianne Moore I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me. George Bernard Shaw She was drunk and broke her toe. Sandra Jensen In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent. Norman Mailer Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Ralph Waldo Emerson Resistance, what are you supporting in me? Bernice Ellis Music in the soul can be heard by the universe. Lao Tzu When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few so uls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God s business. Flannery O Connor If 12 is a circle then 13 is the spiral when the circle is opened. Lindsay McLeod Espinoza It s better to write about things you feel than about things you know about. L. P. Hartley Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightma re. Alfred Hitchcock I can hardly wait for November to start. Gabriele Stehle The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stori es. Carl Gustav Jung To listen with everything that I am For the low sweet tones Of the coming night In the last rays of golden sunlight My heart wanders in the lines and curves Of the branches overhead Among the leaves now opened wide In this moment s expression Leaning against the worn trunk I watch the deepening sky Spread out like the palm of my hand Silence courts the field Even the birds have found stillness As the stars emerge with their inky partners To dance to the moon s song I find under the cover of oak and evening My heart emptied out and cradled In hopes and dreams just imagined And I realize I have been holding my breath Waiting for this moment to become Leigh-Anne Tyson What is now proved was once only imagined. William Blake Pictures must not be too picturesque. Ralph Waldo Emerson I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about. Oscar Wilde The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. T. S. Eliot The writing in itself is still literally crap, but I can make it hit like a sled gehammer when I can go back and put all my love and all my heart in. Pirjo Zeylon The best method for writing is to do it. Michael Swerdloff There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. James Thurber Truly to sing, that is a different breath. Rainer Maria Rilke I just wrote. Leigh-Anne Tyson Reading is a sort of rewriting. Jean-Paul Sartre It s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that s what the poet does. Allen Ginsberg So I ll stick by this fonting thing. Sandra Jensen Apple seed learned me something. Bernice Ellis You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work. William Gibson My right foot is in a cast for the second time this year...don t ask. Jody Strimling-Muchow Ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountains; God composes, wh y shouldn t we? Audra Foveo-Alba i never think at all when i write nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well Archy Suck it in and live it my love, suck it in and live it. We are writers now and t here is no turning back. Bernice Ellis I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with th e art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all. Joyce Carol Oates Now I can smell it too, the cunning 50. Pirjo Zeylon Sometimes I feel like a writer. Michael Swerdloff My work is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in aff irmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention from faith, and this for th e sake of faith in faith itself. Miguel de Unamuno I don t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work. Pearl S. Buck Are all your stars shining? JD Salinger How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor a nd missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his inte ntions were good. Mark Twain Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes. Benjamin Franklin I have this day Pirjo Zeylon shall I make it count? Freefall is an extraordinary process, one which has turned many from I want to be a writer to being writers. Sandra Jensen It has made me the gunman who does not hesitate to draw. I can draw now, anytime . Pirjo Zeylon Life can t ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itsel f is a writer s lover until death fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacher ous, constant. Edna Ferber Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitu te for life. Robert Louis Stevenson Art is not a handicraft. It is the transmission of a feeling which the artist ha s experienced. Leo Tolstoy If you haven t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, an d maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you ll o nly have to throw away the first three pages. William Campbell Gault When you take stuff from one writer, it s plagiarism; but when you take it from ma ny writers, it s research. William Mizner The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely f or the reading of it. Elizabeth Drew The big secret is the ability to stay in the room. Ron Carlson Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. William Shakespeare May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single s econd. Gustave Flaubert The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. Edwin Schlossberg Writing is a crummy profession, but a good hobby. Paavo Haavikko In good writing, words become one with things. Ralph Waldo Emerson Novelty disturbs and repels. Simone de Beauvoir To my dear children, without whose constant love and affection this book would h ave been finished in half the time. P. G. Wodehouse That s one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay cl oser attention. Richard Ford Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I d be a politician. Eugene Ionesco Take care of the sounds, and the sense will take care of itself. Lewis Carroll Since when was genius found respectable? Elizabeth Barrett Browning When I was sitting writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learni ng would have given me, from a chink in the floor that let me hear what was bein g said by the servant girls in the kitchen. J. M. Synge Always do what you are afraid to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all o ur tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other wo rk is but preparation. Rainer Maria Rilke Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. James Thurber Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Henry David Thoreau You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was. Abraham Lincoln I I I I was angry with my friend: told my wrath, my wrath did end. was angry with my foe: told it not, my wrath did grow. William Blake In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living i n attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful write r or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman. Sinclair Lewis The subject of all this is not two camels. There is only one lost camel, but lan guage has difficulty saying that. Rumi An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners s. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought. Mignon McLaughlin name Writers don t need love; all they require is money. John Osborne Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you come out of that wall. Anton Chekhov it will Remarks are not literature. Gertrude Stein Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people. Logan Pearsall Smith to set Make the drummer sound good. Steve Lacy Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be or iginal: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. C. S. Lewis Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal in scription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist. Paul Valery If you don t allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, i t would be hard to write something very good. Steven Galloway My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry. Nikos Kazantzakis Perspective is key. Lindsay McLeod Espinoza From the moment I picked up your book till I laid it down I was convulsed with l aughter. Someday I intend reading it. Groucho Marx All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. F. Scott Fitzgerald To write simply is as difficult as to be good. W. Somerset Maugham There are two ways of speaking an audience will always like one is to tell them what they don t understand; and the other is to tell them what they re used to. George Eliot There s more of yourself in a book than a play. Ben Jonson murdered people; Marlow e was a spy; Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes. Sir John Mortimer That, I replied cordially, P. G. Wodehouse is what it doesn t do anything else but. It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear. Henry David Thoreau An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn t know any women. Art Buchwald Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. William Blake A wounded deer leaps the highest. Emily Dickinson Let me walk through the fields of paper, touching with my wand dry stems and stu nted butterflies. Denise Levertov If I fall asleep with a pen in my hand, don t remove it reams. Danzae Pace I might be writing in my d My relatives say that they are glad I m rich, but that they simply cannot read me. Kurt Vonnegut For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional s incerity. George Orwell No, it s not a very good story its author was too busy listening to other voices t o listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. Stephen King The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a co ld-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possi ble. Edna Ferber When you catch an adjective, kill it. Mark Twain Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms. Kahlil Gibran These critics who crucify me do not guess the littlest part of my sincerity. The y must be burned in a blaze. I cannot learn from them. Zane Grey Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing. Donald Hall Teaching writing is a hustle. Cormac McCarthy Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books, but lives i n our very blood? Carl Jung Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approac h for the rest of the time. The wait is simply too long. Leonard Bernstein Every word written is a victory against death. Michel Butor Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. George Bernard Shaw I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. Emily Dickinson Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. Natalie Goldberg Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to wo rk. Carl Sandburg Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren t very new at a ll. Abraham Lincoln Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul and sings the tune wit hout words, and never stops at all. Emily Dickinson Out of a seeming void and dark-winged sleep Of dim inconscient infinity A Power arose from the insentient deep, A flame-whirl of magician Energy. Sri Aurobindo What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what de stroys it can be told. André Gide Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and c onscious one. Salman Rushdie To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. Herman Melville It is personalities not principles that move the age. Oscar Wilde You have to know the human heart. Thom Jones Rule one of reading other people s stories is that whenever you say onvincing the author tells you that s the bit that wasn t made up. Neil Gaiman well that s not c Better is the enemy of good. Voltaire New writers are often told, Write what you know. I would broaden that by saying, ite what you know emotionally. Marjorie Franco Wr One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a la ter place in the book, or for another book give it, give it all, give it now. So me more will arise for later, something better. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. Annie Dillard Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing b ooks are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing. Benjamin Disraeli The fool who persists in his folly will become wise. William Blake I m nobody, who are you? Emily Dickinson America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. Oscar Wilde I am tired. My arm aches. My head boils. My feet are cold. But I am not aware of any weakness. Zane Grey A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. Carlos Castaneda Watch where you dive, there are rocks where you cannot see them, they can bruise and break your bones without warning. They can also shake off the old layers of skin and fat that are not necessary nor supportive of your journey as writer, f riend, lover, or human. So dive, and then dive again and again. The waters are h ealing and fresh. Go ahead and dive with your eyes closed but open. Dive deeper. The force of the river will carry you to your destination clean, scraped, and s crubbed. Dive deeper. Michael Swerdloff You possess a fearsome array of skills and abilities, and the most satisfying of these may be completely unknown to you now. Chris Baty I have traveled a path and followed a thought and it has all supported me in my unfolding. Bernice Ellis Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. Franz Kafka Books want to be born: I never make them. Samuel Butler A book is one of the few havens remaining where your mind can get both provocati on and privacy. Edward P. Morgan Work is love made visible. Kahlil Gibran When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. Kurt Vonnegut In a good play, everyone is in the right. Fredrich Hebbel By writing much, one learns to write well. Robert Southey Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. William Wordsworth The only need is the eye to see. Willa Cather One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapo ck. The skin of the world was very vast. To be a man after rediscovering a milli on years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. Satprem To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Elbert Hubbard The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. Oscar Wilde Don t sweat the petty things, and don t pet the sweaty things. Groucho Marx The last words I write of a book are very often the first, so it doesn t much matt er how you start. Raymond Hill The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who ll get me a book I ain t read. Abraham Lincoln I m normally not a praying man, but if you re up there, please save me Superman. Homer Simpson Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always. Dante Alighieri The central problem of novel-writing is causality. Jorge Luis Borges While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learn ing to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportu nities for exercising wit. Lewis Carroll Write a page a day. It will add up. Herman Wouk I must go deeper and even stronger into my treasure mine and stint nothing of ti me, toil, or torture. Zane Grey Write from the soul. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal. Jeffrey A. Carver There are four stages in a marriage. First there s the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woma n, the divorce. Norman Mailer The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to th e heart. William Butler Yeats Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, an d mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors . Ralph Waldo Emerson Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. Ezra Pound I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself. Oscar Levant Dream as if you ll live forever. Live as if you ll die today. James Dean Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble edu cation; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? Friedrich Nietzsche What s the product that is imbued with the most value, and the most meaning, and i s the most important thing in the world? Without a doubt, that is books. Emma Barnes Self-confidence can be crippling. Leonard Michaels All good books will eventually find a publisher if the writer tries hard enough, and a central secret to writing a good book is to write on that which people li ke you will enjoy. Write what you care about and understand. Richard North Patterson No tale tells all. Alexei Panshin I always write about my own experiences, whether I ve had them or not. Ron Carlson It is only a woman s cookery, to be sure, he said, toying with a chocolate mousse, d I do not know that I should trust her with game, but within these wide limits, how very good it is! She must be a knowing old soul, with great experience, no doubt in excellent service before the Revolution. Perhaps something of a slut: y our amiable slut makes the best of cooks. Patrick O Brian an Detail is the lifeblood of fiction. John Gardner There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. Mark Strand The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who p roduced him. James Baldwin There fell into my hands a gilded book, very old and large, which cost me only t wo florins. It was not made of paper or parchment as other books are, but of adm irable rinds, as it seemed to me, of young trees. The book contained thrice seve n leaves, so numbered at the top of each folio, every seventh leaf having painte d images and figures instead of writing. On the first of these seven leaves ther e was depicted a virgin who was being swallowed by serpents; on the second a Cro ss upon which a serpent was crucified; on the last a wilderness watered by many fair fountains, out of which came a number of serpents. Nicholas Flamel When people tell you something s wrong or doesn t work, they are almost always right . When they tell you exactly what s wrong and how to fix it, they are almost alway s wrong. Neil Gaiman In brief, I spend half my time trying to learn the secrets of other writers pply them to the expression of my own thoughts. Shirley Ann Grau to a The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters. Cynthia Ozick Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. Homer Simpson A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. Henry David Thoreau Finite to fail, but infinite to venture. Emily Dickinson Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there. J. G. Ballard The doer alone learneth. Friedrich Nietzsche Beauty awakens the soul to act. Dante Alighieri No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It seems so calculating. Oscar Wilde Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread. Pablo Neruda The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to c opy a great deal; the good one really does. William Blake God wasn t too bad a novelist, except he was a Realist. John Barth He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. Friedrich Nietzsche I don t know exactly how it s done. I let it alone a good deal. Saul Bellow Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you. Richard Wilbur It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begin s to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does. William Faulkner Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you re doomed. Ray Bradbury Style, like the human body, is especially beautiful when the veins are not promi nent and the bones cannot be counted. Tacitus The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon. Anthony Burgess Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wr ote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and t hrough moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. Edgar A. Poe Loafing is the most productive part of a writer s life. James Norman Hall As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plot s. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudg e against life. Ivy Compton-Burnett Poets are interested mostly in death and commas. Carolyn Kizer It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the pr ice of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft. Phyllis A. Whitney Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil but there is no way around them. Isaac Asimov An essential element for good writing is a good ear. Barbara Tuchman Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King I wrote a few children s books Steven Wright not on purpose. Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn t every narrative lead back to Oedi pus? Isn t storytelling always a way of searching for one s origin, speaking one s con flicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred? Roland Barthes No tale is so good but can be spoilt in the telling. Terence If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be eno ugh. Meister Eckhart Storytelling reveals meaning without defining it. Hannah Arendt There s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes. Emily Dickinson Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. Jorge Luis Borges Without music, life would be a mistake. Friedrich Nietzsche All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things i n that which is small. Lao Tzu He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book. Benjamin Franklin You have no enemy except yourselves. St. Francis of Assisi The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the gen itals and the tongue. Leonardo da Vinci I ve always wondered if there was a god. And now I know there is Homer Simpson and it s me. It s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. Lewis Carroll In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, and to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings satisfactions, is a curious anticlimax. Alfred Kazin Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. Henry David Thoreau Humour is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous. P. G. Wodehouse Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live alon g some distant day into your answers. Rainer Maria Rilke Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is ju st an embroidered potholder. Raymond Chandler Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods. Jack Warner If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fa me, the gods have called him. Robert Louis Stevenson Have the courage to write whatever your dream is for yourself. May Sarton In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea. Samuel Taylor Coleridge If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest. G. I. Gurdjieff They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from the ir flame philosophy lights its torch. Marquis de Sade Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his so ul. W. Somerset Maugham What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. Samuel Taylor Coleridge There are things known, there are things unknown, in between are doors. Jim Morrison Everything popular is wrong. Oscar Wilde During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, w hen the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, o n horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found m yself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. Edgar Allen Poe Never confuse movement with action. Ernest Hemingway To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. William Shakespeare I have one major rule: everybody is right. Ken Wilber A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning. I write out of curiousity and bewild erment. William Trevor The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded. Emanuel Swedenborg An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity o f all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hol d it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant howls. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his howls on paper. Such is the th ing called self-expression. H. L. Mencken It is meaningless to complain. What s important from this point on is the strategy of your life. Carlos Castaneda Writing is both mask and unveiling. E. B. White Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it i s the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. Paul Auster Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That s the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse. Marianne Williamson First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him! Ray Bradbury The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of t he chair. Mary Heaton Vorse Someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility is a fool an d a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven. I admire the authority of being on one s knees in front of the event. Harold Brodkey An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. Charles de Montesquieu Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone. Ursula K. LeGuin When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that th e gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge. Albert Einstein Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one s courage. Anaïs Nin Artists and poets must find the light in which they can find themselves. Frances Kelly I try to envision the story as a silent movie before I start adding dialogue. John Sayles Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody. John Gardner If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things. Henry David Thoreau It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. Friedrich Nietzsche Will cannot be quenched against its will. Dante Alighieri When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That s my religion. Abraham Lincoln Words cannot express things; Speech does not convey the spirit. Swayed by words, one is lost; Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered. The oak tree in the garden. Once you see it, dreams fade away. Mumon The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties. W. Somerset Maugham The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. Samuel Taylor Coleridge They do not grasp how being at variance it agrees with itself, a backward-turnin g adjustment like that of the bow or lyre. Heraclitus It s money and adventure and fame! It s the thrill of a lifetime and a long sea voyag e that starts at six o clock tomorrow! James Creelman and Ruth Rose Unless you enter the tiger s den, you cannot take the cubs. Japanese proverb Why is language most efficacious when it says one thing through meaning another? Jacques Lacan abracadabraabracadabra bracadabraabracadabr racadabraabracadab acadabraabracada cadabraabracad adabraabraca dabraabrac abraabra braabr raab aa Unknown To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art. Anthony Burgess If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is , infinite. William Blake Trouble shadows the Home Tribe. You hear its call. The land is barren, and someo ne must go beyond. A figure emerges from the campfire smoke, an elder pointing t o you. You have been chosen as Seeker. You will venture your life so the greater life of the Home Tribe may go on. Christopher Vogler The path comes into existence only when we observe it. Heisenberg Goose, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These when inked and drawn me chanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair an d accurate transcript of the fowl s thought and feeling. Ambrose Bierce A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or t hinking about writing. Eugene Ionesco A novelist is a person who lives in other people s skins. E. L. Doctorow Every word born of an inner necessity. Etty Hillesum Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather, and a little music out of do ors, played by somebody I do not know. John Keats A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than argume nts. Joyce Cary I am irritated by my own writing. Gustave Flaubert The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty. Edmund Gosse The writer must have a more than ordinary capacity for life. Paul Engle Our high respect for a well-read person is praise enough for literature. T. S. Eliot I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows; Quite o er-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night, Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight. William Shakespeare There s no such thing beneath the heavens as conditions favorable to art. Art must crash through or perish. Sylvia Ashton-Warner The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones. Joseph Joubert The fact is that all time is simultaneous. In a simultaneous time, punishment ma kes no sense. The punishment as an event and the event for which you are being p unished exist at once; and since there is no past, present and future, you could just as well say that the punishment came first. Seth Humbly receiving death and life, to hell I release all claim, and with new eyes see my eternal love Miguel Angel Ruiz leaving. Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin Publication is the auction of the Mind of Man. Emily Dickinson People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it and yourself. Rosemary Daniell Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning. Elizabeth Bowen There are some books that refuse to be written. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. Mark Twain Load every rift with ore. John Keats Literature is the rediscovery of childhood. Georges Bataille The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subj ect has to tell him. Rachel Carson A man s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of ar t, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. Albert Camus Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door. Emily Dickinson Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. Dr Samuel Johnson Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, onc e and for all, who he is. Jorge Luis Borges He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much. Lao Tzu Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts. Jim Morrison One doesn t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. André Gide Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams. W. Somerset Maugham My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin. Karl Kraus When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn t like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there s a g reat, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent. Alan Garner There are times when quantity is at least as important as quality in learning an art. Lawrence Watt-Evans The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. Thomas Jefferson Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its charact ers and plot and happened somewhere else. Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who s here? Who s coming? Eudora Welty Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with fo lly. Erasmus There are worse crimes than burning books. One is not reading them. Joseph Brodsky If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. Emile Zola Even though stories abound in my culture, we have no word for fiction. The only way I could get across the Western concept of fiction was to associate fiction w ith telling lies. Malidoma Patrick Some It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it is such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it. Ernest Hemingway Energy is eternal delight. William Blake You re only as young as the last time you changed your mind. Timothy Leary A full tide and a warm wind, A wish to set my home, If freedom dreamed belongs to me, It sails upon the foam. Child of the extremes, You learn the lessons slow, You cover many traveled turns And build the unclaimed road. A path taught to me yesterday May still inside me glow, But farther out upon the way A footstep never shows. Scott Jeffries Where we go now is new. Bernice Ellis Learning is also important for the warrior in times of peace. Budoshoshinshu The brain has a tendency toward chronic blaming. Dr. Paul Pearsall If you have men who will exclude any of God s creatures from the shelter of compas sion and pity, you have men who will deal likewise with their fellow man. St. Francis of Assisi Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize. James Joyce A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his frien ds. Friedrich Nietzsche Imagine Create Become Leigh-Anne Tyson Waste my heart on fear no more. John O Donohue It s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Gustave Flaubert These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. Gilbert Highet Why dance the praise? So the words can be formed in the motion of the body. So t he spirit emerges from the very cauldron, the heat and fire of the self. For the reason that some writers always use a pen for various drafts, rather than a mac hine, the better to feel the physical intimacy of the event of writing. Deena Metzger Beliefs may need to be restructured rather than denied. Jane Roberts It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us. John Ruskin I would rather be ashes than dust. Jack London When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explain ed. Mark Twain The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected. W. Somerset Maugham A man will turn over half a library to make one book. Samuel Johnson You have all the scenes. Just go home and word it in. Samuel Goldwyn The job of the critic is to report to us his moods. Oscar Wilde Good prose is like a windowpane. George Orwell What the font? Leigh-Anne Tyson The principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows them possesses the magic key bef ore whose touch all doors of the temple fly open. The Kybalion Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan? Robert A. Heinlein There s no secret to success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn t tell you all about it? Kin Hubbard I stake my destiny upon hours of uninterrupted work. Charles Baudelaire The pageant of the riverbank had marched steadily along. Purple loosestrife arri ved early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the mirror whence i ts own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sun set cloud, was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the whi te, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffi dent and delaying dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if string-music had announced it in stately chords that strayed into a gavotte, tha t June at last was here. One member of the company was still awaited; the shephe rd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at the windo w, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping summer back to life and love. But wh en meadow-sweet, debonair and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his p lace in the group, then the play was ready to begin. Kenneth Grahame It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without acc epting it. Aristotle I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. Ernest Hemingway I had discovered, early in my researches, that their hermetic doctrine was no me re chemical fantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements , and to man himself. W. B. Yeats From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sl eep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them. Paracelsus The shot will go smoothly only when it takes the archer himself by surprise. Eugene Herrigel Industry need not wish. Benjamin Franklin Joking is teaching. Don t be fooled by the lightness or the vulgarity. Jokes are s erious. Rumi For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned sk ywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. Leonardo da Vinci Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer. Frederic Raphael Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. Ernest Hemingway One becomes two, two becomes three, and by means of the third and fourth achieve s unity; thus two are but one. Invert nature and you will find that what you see k. Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought. Maria the Jewess The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. J. Krishnamurti You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you re writing. Gene Wolfe Where s your will to be weird? Jim Morrison Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. I t s delightful to distort size, to see something that s tiny as though it were vast. Robert Morgan Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me. Zane Grey The brain is wider than the sky. Emily Dickinson For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. William Blake All my life, I ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write. Gabriel Garcia Marquez The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook. Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Don t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what y ou have to say. It s the one and only thing you have to offer. Barbara Kingsolver It would not be better if things happened just as men wish. Heraclitus Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of s tyle. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Marge, don t discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It s what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel. Homer Simpson It is a greater joy to see the author s author, than himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson Still back e. It h out no response from my editor in New York. Almost two months now since I sent the manuscript. There are problems, I saw today, but nothing insurmountabl s the other thing, this silence, that sits on my chest and crushes the breat of me. Bill Barich Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don t write them d own. W. B. Kinsella A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that i s idle. Kahlil Gibran Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, th ey are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. Theodore Dreiser Make it new. Ezra Pound We are the species that clamors to be lied to. Joyce Carol Oates The power of the symbol comes from the nature of perception and thought. The tra in whistle makes us see the train, the footstep in the hall reminds us of the fa mily relative. Delmore Schwartz A novelist is someone who sits around the house all day in his underwear, trying not to smoke. Scott Spencer The usual way through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent . Danielle Steel There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. Herman Melville Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicu e at the end. Sid Caesar I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes but is that all? Walt Whitman What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decen t sort of fellow. A. A. Milne What is really beautiful must always be true. Stendhal I couldn t wait for success, so I went ahead without it. Jonathan Winters Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind making it up as you go along, like a comm on liar. John Irving Develop any other skill; turn to any other branch of knowledge; learn how to use your hands. Try woodworking, bird watching, gardening, mushrooming, cooking, fi shing, sailing, weaving, pottery, zoology, astronomy, cosmology, take your pick. Whatever activity you engage in as trade or hobby, or field of study, will tone up your body and clear your head. At the very least, it will help you with your metaphors. Stanley Kunitz No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing. E. B. White The proper study of mankind is books. Aldous Huxley Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it. You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week. Will Rogers When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with whi ch to find the way. Japanese proverb It is better to create than to learn. Creating is the essence of life. Julius Caesar The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything. Walt Whitman Every writer at some point must go through an analytical period, but in time he must get his own characteristic solutions into his blood, so that when confronte d by a problem in a novel he s writing he does not consult his literary background . He feels his way to the solution. John Gardner Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There is no measure or limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an aut hor; some out of vanity to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of filthy lucre and gain. Martin Luther In art, economy is always beauty. Henry James Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses t o this terrifying century. E. L. Doctorow Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Ralph Waldo Emerson I can make more generals, but horses cost money. Abraham Lincoln A true friend stabs you in the front. Oscar Wilde The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; per haps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. Jorge Luis Borges We have art in order not to die of the truth. Friedrich Nietzsche A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering . Gurdjieff Have common sense and stick to the point. W. Somerset Maugham Truth is in things, and not in words. Herman Melville Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. Walt Whitman One can acquire everything in solitude Stendhal except character. The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape findi ng oneself in the ranks of the insane. Marcus Aurelius Transmute yourselves from deadstones into living philosophical stones. Gerhardt Dorn You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book spec ifically for children, for if you are honest you have no idea where childhood en ds and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. P. L. Travers There is no blue without yellow and without orange. Vincent Van Gogh Dreaming or awake, we perceive only events that have meaning to us. Jane Roberts Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew. Charles Dickens If you write well, you don t have to dress funny. James Dickey Then what is writing of quality? To know how to thrust your head into the darkne ss, know how to leap into the void, and to understand that literature is basical ly a dangerous calling. Roberto Bolaño Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them. A. A. Milne The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters , is simplicity. Walt Whitman Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. Marcus Aurelius A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as t he body. Benjamin Franklin Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood . Friedrich Nietzsche Anybody can be good in the country. Oscar Wilde Nature is a temple where living columns Let slip from time to time uncertain words; Man finds his way through forests of symbols Which regard him with familiar gazes. Charles Baudelaire Fear is the mind-killer. Frank Herbert Whatever inspiration is, it s born from a continuous Wislawa Szymborska I don t know. The stories o you, care es a person stories in Barry Lopez people tell have a way of taking care of them. If the stories come t for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometim needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these each other s memory. All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deservin g and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. P. G. Wodehouse A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sente nces, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips. Charles Dickens In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refug e for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural do ubt of the authenticity of my narrative. H. P. Lovecraft I want you to be everything that s you, deep at the center of your being. Confucius Becoming is the mode of activity of the uncreate deity. Helena P. Blavatsky The Lord of Delphi neither speaks nor remains silent; but he speaks in symbols. Heraclitus Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Writing is the supreme solace. W. Somerset Maugham It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of tho ught of others. Marquis de Sade Dwell in possibility. Emily Dickinson Books can only reveal us to ourselves. Henry David Thoreau I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. Of course it rare ly ends that way. Kashua Ishigura That s the essential goal of the writer: you slice out a piece of yourself and sla p it down on the desk in front of you. Stephen Leigh The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel, the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. William Faulkner One sheds one s sicknesses in books master of them. D. H. Lawrence repeats and presents again one s emotions, to be Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can t expect an angel to look out . Arthur Schoenhauer By far the greatest thing is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing tha t cannot be learned from others. It is a sign of genius, for a good metaphor imp lies an intuitive perception of similarity among dissimilars. Aristotle Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. Vincent Van Gogh If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation o f their own works. John Dos Passos If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. P. L. Travers The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity s omehow meet. His problem is to find that location. Flannery O Connor Art is the objectification of feeling. Herman Melville Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from whic h new arts flow. Paracelsus Water is the driving force of all nature. Leonardo da Vinci An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox. Lao Tzu Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. Anthony Trollope Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty. St. Francis of Assisi People are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. Franklin D. Roosevelt Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely i maginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. Samuel Taylor Coleridge One writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out o f the leaf-mould of mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. J.R.R. Tolkien Myth hovers in the shadows of fairy tales. Deena Metzger A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to s tick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy boo k with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat. Mark Twain What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my i magination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked w ith azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach. Logan Pearsall Smith It s much more important to write than to be written about. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Never save anything for your next book. Tam Mossman I accept Time absolutely. Walt Whitman It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. W. Somerset Maugham A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. Benjamin Franklin What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and before the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him. E. M. Forster If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curt is flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the e nemy s trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on who m the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties inste ad of overcoming them one by one: he is looking on at the suicide of his own tal ent. Honore de Balzac Inside every fat book is a thin book trying to get out. Unknown You must break all the rules of painting, but you must also convince me you ve had a reason to do so. Hans Hoffman God writes a lot of comedy. Trouble is, he s stuck with so many bad actors who don t know how to play funny. Garrison Keillor I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all. E. B. White The novel is an event in consciousness. The novelist is inviting readers to watc h a performance in their own brain. George Buchanan The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly. William Wordsworth A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you ve scowled upon. Nathaniel Hawthorne We can be knowledgeable with other men s knowledge, but we cannot be wise with oth er men s wisdom. Michel de Montaigne To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. Elizabeth I Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of trut h. She is positively akin to infinity. Charles Baudelaire I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. Vincent Van Gogh It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, inde ed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? Vita Sackville-West The road that is walked in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than a road tro d in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination. Marion Zimmer Bradley I think it s bad to talk about one s present work, for it spoils something at the ro ot of the creative act. It discharges the tension. Norman Mailer An observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to those who sneer at the use of coincidence in fiction and drama that life itself is little more tha n a series of coincidences. Rafael Sabatini However great a man s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once. Jean Jacques Rousseau Maybe, just once, someone will call me Homer Simpson Sir without adding, You re making a scene. If you re looking for messages, try Western Union. Ernest Hemingway You don t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great . Les Brown If you follow your bliss you will find a path laid out before you that has been waiting all along. Joseph Campbell People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. William Butler Yeats He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. Oscar Wilde When you are content to be simply yourself and don t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. Lao Tzu Sometimes the guide is as mysterious as the psychopomp Hermes, who leads the sou ls of the dead into the underworld, or as formidable as Virgil, who led Dante in to the realms of hell; sometimes she is a wondrous as the appearance of an angel or as disturbing as the odd creature at the crossroads whom we were lucky enoug h to befriend and thereby earned a gift the cloak of invisibility, the magic pas sword, the sleeping potion without which we cannot cross over to or survive on t he other side. Deena Metzger Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity. William Wordsworth Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people iting. Laura Miller if only they d stop wr Did it happen? No. Is it true? Yes. Ron Carlson Men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the though t of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the g ulfs beyond the stars. H. P. Lovecraft Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective , not the truth. Marcus Aurelius Know the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. Herman Melville To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. Aldous Huxley I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. James Joyce Dreams are the touchstones of our character. Henry David Thoreau The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and f amiliar things new. Samuel Johnson Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful i n the mature than in the young. W. Somerset Maugham I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came in to being. It happens because the storyteller s own experience has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. Lady Murasaki Draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time. Michelangelo When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. Anatole France I don t take drugs, I take books. Ingeborg Bachmann A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. Robert Heinlein My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly. John D. MacDonald Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it eit her a poison or a remedy. Paracelsus Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don t see any. Orson Scott Card Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand. Chinese proverb Writers have an island, a center of refuge, within themselves. It is the mind s an chorage, the soul s Great Good Place. Wright Morris In change things rest. Heraclitus If I ever get real rich, I hope I m not mean to poor people, like I am now. Jack Handy The Philosopher s Stone is called the most ancient, secret or unknown, natural, in comprehensible, heavenly, blessed, sacred Stone of the Sages. It is described as being true, more certain than certainty itself, the arcanum of all arcana the D ivine virtue which is hidden from the foolish, the aim and end of all things und er heaven, the wonderful epilogue or conclusion of all the labours of the Sages the perfect essence of all the elements, the indestructible body which no elemen t can injure, the quintessence; the double and living mercury which has in itsel f the heavenly spirit the cure for all unsound and imperfect metals the everlast ing light the panacea for all diseases the glorious Ph nix the most precious of tr easures the chief good of Nature the universal triune Stone, which is naturally composed of three things, and, nevertheless, is but one nay, is generated and br ought forth of one, two, three, four, and five. The Sophic Hydrolith The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peer s into the microscope. Max Ernst Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he s well dressed. There ain t m uch credit in that. Charles Dickens And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, t ill the Devil whispered behind the leaves It s pretty, but is it Art? Rudyard Kipling You cannot open a book without learning something. Confucius I felt a cleavage in my mind As if my brain had split; I tried to match it, seam by seam, But could not make them fit. Emily Dickinson What is the subconscious to every other person, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, the muse. Ray Bradbury Only he who can be can do. Gurdjieff The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not re quire his attention. Flannery O Connor The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book. Mickey Spillane I can t think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of ma ny good films that came from very bad novels. Gabriel Garcia Marquez The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea. Thomas Mann Try to be one on whom nothing is lost. Henry James Writing is communication, not self-expression. Richard Peck For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word. Catherine Drinker Bowen There is in a word something sacred which forbids us from using it recklessly. T o handle a language cunningly is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. Charles Baudelaire Never give a sword to a man who can t dance. Confucius Fundamental accuracy is the sole morality of writing. Ezra Pound You could tell it was classical music, because the banjo players were leaning ba ck and chewing gum; and in New York restaurants only death or a classical specal ity can stop banjoists. P. G. Wodehouse I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it. Theodore Sturgeon The writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. Dr Seuss Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands. Marquis de Sade There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extr emes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not see k to interpret. H. P. Lovecraft Conviction without experience makes for harshness. Flannery O Connor You can t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. A. A. Milne She was looking more and more like an aunt than anything human. P. G. Wodehouse There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated. Charles Dickens He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. Samuel Taylor Coleridge My interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for bei ng here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous ti me. Carlos Castaneda Think no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, and you will never write a best-sellin g novel. Dan Bennett God s only excuse is that he does not exist. Stendhal An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie. Aldous Huxley It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. St. Francis of Assisi One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Nietzsche I love my work but do not know how I write it. Zane Grey Common-looking people are the best in the world. That is the reason the Lord mak es so many of them. Abraham Lincoln The ideas aren t that important. Really they aren t. Everyone s got an idea for a book , a movie, a story, a TV series. Neil Gaiman On most writers, the earmarks of thrift, if not outright povery, are evident. Joyce Thompson And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning. Louis L Amour To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal. William James The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. The Necronomicon He said true things, but called them by the wrong names. Elizabeth Barrett Browning People can die of mere imagination. Geoffrey Chaucer When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. John Milton Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive. George Washington The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings ra ther than illustrating. Jackson Pollock For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my poc ket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded. James M. Barrie He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust. He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings Was but a book. What liberty A loosened spirit brings! Emily Dickinson We are trying to create a world in the imagination from which to draw the kinds of experiences we need in order to realize our possibilities. Deena Metzger I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficientl y to reason incorrectly. Michel de Montaigne Basically, fiction is people. You can t write fiction about ideas. Theodore Sturgeon The best way to know God is to love many things. Vincent Van Gogh Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody. Benjamin Franklin Nature is not human-hearted. Lao Tzu One who has not had a good father must create one. Friedrich Nietzsche What is the price of experience? It is bought with the price of all a man hath, his house, his wife, his children. William Blake Every burned book enlightens the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not , it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life. James M. Barrie To begin, begin. William Wordsworth Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius. He who reads in a proper spir it, can scarcely read too much. William Godwin Even if what you re working on doesn t go anywhere, it will help you with the next t hing you re doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot . Cormac McCarthy No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or sur render yourself to self-chosen ignorance. Confucius Some of ens, of eas, of shadowy f thick es into us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gard fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring s plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges o forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gat that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. H. P. Lovecraft The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocen ce. Flannery O Connor Ideas are but approximations. To the gods, our ideas are children s toys. Heraclitus If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed. David Viscott I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I myself become the wounded person . Walt Whitman The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing. Ken MacLeod I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror. Carson McCullers The book should act as a window to the word. Harry Duncan Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines lif e. William James Awake, arise, or be forever fallen! John Milton When you re painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. Jackson Pollock Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. Nathaniel Hawthorne I feel I ve certainly been lucky to find a publisher who seems so interested gener ally in his authors. F. Scott Fitzgerald O son, how many bodies have we to pass through, how many bands of demons, throug h how many series of repetitions and cycles of the stars, before we hasten to th e One alone? Hermes Trismegistus While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die . Leonardo da Vinci If thou art a writer, write as if thy time were short, for it is. Henry David Thoreau Pessimist: one who, when he has a choice between two evils, chooses both. Oscar Wilde Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end. Ernest Hemingway Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. Emily Dickinson Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art. Paul Schrader You have to have that feeling of I ll show them. If you don t have it, don t become a wr iter. It s part of the animal, it s primitive, but if you don t want to rise above the crowd, forget it. Leon Uris A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other peo ple. Thomas Mann The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life. Norbet Platt A writer: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human f eelings right. John K. Hutchens What I don t write is as important as what I write. Jamaica Kincaid He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Louisa May Alcott For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, f or fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in man y parts of the world, in all periods of time. Louis L Amour He lives most life whoever breathes most air. Elizabeth Barrett Browning If you are a genius, you ll make your own rules, but if not and the odds are again st it go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the pa per. J. B. Priestley I don t sing because I m happy; I m happy because I sing. William James I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned. Lord Byron There must be room in love for hate. Molly Peacock Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. Cicero Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsenti mental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Santha Rama Rau To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere moti ve in scribbling at all. Lord Byron With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. William Wordsworth A boy s story is the best that is ever told. Charles Dickens People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make. G. K. Chesterton When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it we re, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. Paracelsus Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Henry David Thoreau Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow. Camille Paglia Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. Max Ernst Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness. Pablo Picasso The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Percy Bysshe Shelley Those with something to fall back on invariably fall back on it. They intended to all along. That is why they provided themselves with it. David Mamet At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, gram mars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction. Elizabeth Barrett Browning A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. Nelson Algren Fiction is an act of revenge. John Hawkes Any ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books, and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. Nelson Algren To imagine yourself inside another person is what a story writer does in every p iece of work. It is his first step, and his last too. Eudora Welty If you really want to hurt your parents and don t have nerve enough to be homosexu al, the least you can do is go into the arts. Kurt Vonnegut Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment. Joseph Roux Don t mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin. Stanley Schmidt Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! Fyodor Dostoevsky When a man s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion. Herbert Spencer The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person. Brenda Ueland From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment. Miguel de Cervantes A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Ayn Rand Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. Aldous Huxley The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there w ill be. Lao Tzu Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences. Gore Vidal Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of tr uthfulness. Most believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist knows how difficult it is. Willa Cather Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because th e muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards. Homer Everything stinks till it s finished. Dr Seuss Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three. Confucius That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you ve understood all your life, but in a new way. Doris Lessing I wish they would only take me as I am. Vincent Van Gogh And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death. Walt Whitman The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god. Friedrich Nietzsche I m not a teacher, but an awakener. Robert Frost Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. William Zinsser Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that i t had merely been detected. Oscar Wilde Everything that suffers is sensible; everything that is sensible, suffereth. The Divine Pymander I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forwa rd. Thomas Edison Without a gentle contempt for education, no man s education is complete. G. K. Chesterton Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermis t. Camille Paglia Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is beauti ful , especially if dissociated from its sense and spelling. More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. J.R.R. Tolkien There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart. Charles Dickens Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble. Benjamin Franklin Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man s character, giv e him power. Abraham Lincoln The novel is likely, if the best literary brains cannot be induced to return to it, to survive in some perfunctory, despised and hopelessly degenerate form, lik e modern tombstones, or the Punch and Judy show. George Orwell An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don t know why they choose him and he s usually too busy to wonder why. William Faulkner Who are you going to believe Groucho Marx me, or your own eyes? It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle ; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. Henry Ward Beecher No time for poetry but exactly what is. Jack Kerouac It takes a great deal of experience to become natural. Willa Cather Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Franklin P. Adams Any story takes place in the landscape of the imagination. Stef Penney Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. John Campbell To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself. Mark Twain You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them. The great charm of all power is modesty. Louisa May Alcott There s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tuck ed in for the night, and that s a writer sitting down to write. Mignon McLaughlin A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. William James The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first. Blaise Pascal The naming of what is there is what is important. Ian McEwan Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own. James M. Barrie The Principle of Rhythm embodies this truth: that in everything there is manifes ted a measured motion; a to-and-from movement; a flow and inflow; a swing forwar d and backward; a pendulum-like movement between opposing energies. The Kybalion Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unth inking. John Maynard Keynes To feel within my body that I was pushing out to new areas of feeling, strange l andmarks of emotion, tramping upon foreign soil, compounding new relationships o f perception, making new and unheard-of effects with words. That is writing as I feel it, a kind of significant living. Richard Wright It is not inspiration; it is expiration. Jean Cocteau Close the door. Barbara Kingsolver Plausibility is the morality of fiction. Edith Mirrilees Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. Herbert Spencer I don t like work, but I like what is in the work Joseph Conrad the chance to find yourself. Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every othe r impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater becaus e I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace ; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent. H. P. Lovecraft The object of art is to give life a shape. William Shakespeare America is essentially a woman s country n? Henry Miller why shouldn t the leading novelists be wome All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to wal ls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken. Thomas Wolfe The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Eleanor Roosevelt Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity. Nadine Gordimer You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. William E. Gladstone When we sit down each day and do our work. The Muse takes note of our dedication . She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. we become like a magnetized r od that attracts iron filings. Steven Pressfield Realists do not fear the results of their study. Fyodor Dostoevsky God has entrusted me with myself. Epictetus The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books . Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. Aleister Crowley A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare Every man is the son of his own works. Miguel de Cervantes When I think about all the crap I learned in high school it s a wonder I can think at all. Paul Simon The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea. P. G. Wodehouse All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I. Louis L Amour Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps. William Blake Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. Beatrix Potter A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living t hought and may vary greatly in color and content. Oliver Wendell Holmes The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader re ads one is to remember it. Tom Wolfe My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. Thomas Hardy Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her f ace. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due she reminds us too much of a prima donna. E. M. Forster Nothing is proved, all is permitted. Theodore Dreiser Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. W. C. Fields To be energetic and authentic, a national literature includes dialogues with the despised. Equally, our own writing wants to be infused with the dark light from our underworlds. Deena Metzger Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken. Frank Herbert In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, t hen he who continues the attack wins. Ulysses S. Grant Once you got Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once yo u thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again. Andy Warhol It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. D o not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The w orld will present itself to you for its unmasking. It can do no other. In ecstas y it will writhe at your feet. Franz Kafka I write to escape; to escape poverty. Edgar Rice Burroughs The imagination needs moodling tering. Brenda Ueland long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and put Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but on e special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the film iest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. William James Do what you can with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt It is easy to finish things. Nothing is simpler. Never does one lie so cleverly as then. Toulouse Lautrec We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our p assion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. Henry James I m not funny. What I am is brave. Lucille Ball He who is only just is cruel. Lord Byron A troop of porcupines is milling about on a cold winter s day. In order to keep fr om freezing, the animals move closer together. Just as they are close enough to huddle, however, they start to poke each other with their quills. In order to st op the pain, they spread out, lose the advantage of commingling, and begin to sh iver. This sends them back in search of each other, and the cycle repeats as the y struggle to find a comfortable distance between entanglement and freezing. Arthur Schopenhauer It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. Henry David Thoreau Let us not make arbitrary conjectures about the greatest matters. Heraclitus I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is more than living, for it is bei ng conscious of living. Anne Morrow Lindbergh You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. James M. Barrie Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just f alls back into her and is swallowed up. Camille Paglia The more particular, the more specific you are, the more universal you are. Nancy Hale I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult. E. B. White I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and dance d all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning. Aleister Crowley My aim is to put down what I see in the best and simplest way. Ernest Hemingway If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. Epictetus A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. Lord Byron Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always car ry a small snake. W. C. Fields The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indiffere nt to the fact that no such person exists. E. M. Forster There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is seeing something that isn t there. Thomas Hardy I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go. Joseph Conrad You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing. Alice Munro I will show you fear in a handful of dust. T. S. Eliot Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it s the readers who build that world in their own minds. Ursula Le Guin Don t say the old lady screamed Mark Twain bring her on and let her scream. If a secret history of books could be written, and the author s private thoughts a nd meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would be come interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! William Makepeace Thackeray Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circu mstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, gift edness, or skill. W. C. Fields Why don t you come into my garden? I would like my roses to see you. Richard Brinsley Sheridan I m a holy man minus the holiness. E. M. Forster The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. John Steinbeck We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actu ally read a volume of four or five hundred pages. Ralph Waldo Emerson The only thing I can say that is not bullshit is that you do have to learn to wr ite in a way that you would learn to play the violin. Everybody seems to think t hat you should be able to turn on the faucet one day and out will come the novel . I think for most people it s just practice, practice, practice, that sense of ju st learning your instrument until when you have an idea on the violin, you don t h ave to translate it into violin-speak anymore the language is your own. It s not s omething you can think your way into, or outsmart. you ve just got to do it. Kevin Canty When I m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is. Anne Rice Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin. Kahlil Gibran Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling and good ex pression; it is having wit, soul and taste, all together. George-Louis Leclerc Nothing can come of nothing. William Shakespeare The bones connected by joints are at once one and several. To agree is to differ , the harmony is the discord. From the particulars come oneness, from oneness th e particulars. Heraclitus There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead t hrough neat critical gardens, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. Jessamyn West If you wish to be a writer, write. Epictetus It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Arthur Conan Doyle Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Bet ter make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you. William Makepeace Thackeray Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dea ling with men. Joseph Conrad Not every man can see the truth, but he can be it. Franz Kafka The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. Andy Warhol Writing for adults, you have to keep reminding them of what is going on. Childre n you only need to tell things to once. Diana Wynne Jones The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can t touch. E. M. Forster If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man s li fe sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The writer s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible fo r the reader to discern what he would perhaps never have seen in himself. Marcel Proust God gave us memory so we might have roses in December. James M. Barrie I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. Vincent Van Gogh Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world. Miguel De Cervantes If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. William James When I say artist I mean the man who is building things. It s all a big game of co nstruction some with a brush some with a shovel some choose a pen. Jackson Pollock It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning. Rainer Maria Rilke Your writing is trying to tell you something. Joanne Greenberg The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. Robert Benchley The virtue of books is to be readable. Ralph Waldo Emerson No matter what the subject, the subject is always love. Ingrid Bengis Everybody has won, and all must have prizes. Lewis Carroll Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure . Jane Austen They said this mystery never shall cease: The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace. William Blake A room without books is like a body without a soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better. Herman Hesse To tell the truth is a very difficult thing; and young people are rarely capable of it. Leo Tolstoy If a person feels he can t communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it. Tom Lehrer If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. E. M. Forster Love is life s reward, rewarded in rewarding. Herbert Spencer Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a g ood line. Theodore Roethke Bring my goat. Porgy Words derive their power from the original word. Meister Eckhart Books are not meant to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we cons ider a book, we mustn t ask ourselves what it says but what it means. Umberto Eco Many that live deserve death and many that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to deal out death and judgement, for even the very wise cannot see all ends. J.R.R. Tolkien Don Quixote s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza. Franz Kafka Carpe per diem Robin Williams seize the check. I have tried to do what is true and not ideal. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec The energy of divine fire shines forth voluntarily and in common, and being self -invoked and self-energetic, energizes through all things with invariable samene ss, both through the natures which impart and those that are able to receive its light. This mode of solution, therefore, is far superior, which does not suppos e that divine works are effected through contrariety, or discrepance, in the way in which generated natures are usually produced; but asserts that every such wo rk is rightly accomplished through sameness, union, and consent. Iamblichus On The Mysteries The poet shall shall know that the ground is always ready-ploughed and manured. Others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His t rust shall master the trust of everything he touches and shall master all attach ment. Walt Whitman Practice doesn t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Vince Lombardi Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; the refore it is dumb. Umberto Eco When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole. William Makepeace Thackeray If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you ca n go. James Baldwin Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn. William Shakespeare I deny nothing, but doubt everything. Lord Byron He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sen se. Joseph Conrad When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships. Andy Warhol If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Inspiration is the act of drawing up a chair to the writing desk. Unknown Art, it seems to me, should simplify, so that all that one has suppressed and cu t away is there to the reader s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. Willa Cather I left nearly all my business to an agent. I am still encumbered with his sloven ly and disadvantageous agreements. H. G. Wells It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen , to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn t advance the sto ry. Frank Yerby The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. Samuel Johnson Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a voi d, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can g ive form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substanc e itself. Mary Shelley Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its ro ots into the very depth of your heart. Rainer Maria Rilke In the middle of my life s walk I found myself in a dark wood, For the straight road was lost. Dante Alighieri Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It s literary suicide. Erma Bombeck Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effe ct. Both deny the infinite. Frank Herbert There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy. E. M. Forster No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes. William E. Gladstone The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they ha ve never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. Vincent Van Gogh Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject h e may. Walter Savage Landor Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. T. S. Eliot Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men s judgments of one another. Erasmus No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound phil osopher. Samuel Taylor Coleridge All our heroes, all our great stories are about failure. Peter Carey Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not yet been di scovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for this reason. Samuel Butler Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and b y regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. William James Dreams must be heeded and accepted. For a great many of them come true. Paracelsus My painting does not come from the easel. Jackson Pollock Biography lends to death a new terror. Oscar Wilde The writer s intention hasn t anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to ea rn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn t matter in th e end. Just what comes out. Lillian Hellman I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Ernest Hemingway There is no try. There is only do or do not. Yoda In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The wor st thing you can do is nothing. Theodore Roosevelt It s under Edit. Claire Born Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. Meister Eckhart To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust f ulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. Elizabeth Gilbert A writer without sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable a s a writer. Joseph Conrad Dare and the world yields. William Makepeace Thackeray It ain t what they call you, it s what you answer to. W. C. Fields One of the things that happens to careers out here is that people destroy themse lves because they begin to think they re wonderful. They begin to think they know what they re doing, and the minute that happens, it s over. William Goldman Jests that give pain are no jests. Miguel de Cervantes Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Ayn Rand A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities. Herman Melville Thunderbolt is at the helm. Heraclitus A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one. Benjamin Franklin Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. T he soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety. Trevor Nunn Somewhere in his journals Dostoyevsky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pray and dig aw ay long enough, and lo! soon he will hit upon the marvelous. Saul Bellow Sure, it s simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up. Ursula K. LeGuin From two waters make one, whereby seek to make the sun and moon. Prepare to drin k the wine of the antagonists. And you shall see with the Dead. Thereupon, make watery earth. And multiply the stone. The Splendor Solis Be a fool on the page. Step off the cliff. Deena Metzger Talent can t be taught, but it can be awakened. Wallace Stegner I paint things as they are. I don t comment. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person. Arthur Conan Doyle The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his lif e by altering his attitude. William James Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gymbal in the wabe: All mimsey were the borogroves, And the momes rath outgrabe. Lewis Carrol Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that wil l endure as long as life lasts. Rachel Carson The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. Geoffrey Chaucer I don t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. J. D. Salinger You re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn t lose it. Robin Williams Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil. Lord Byron At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a c ollective dignity. E. M. Forster The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact. William Shakespeare There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice. Nadine Gordimer The world nourishes bodies, the spirit nourishes souls. Hermes Trismegistus In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd. Miguel de Cervantes Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet. Camille Paglia Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less. W. Somerset Maugham Really to pray, one must want nothing. Meister Eckhart The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. August Wilson A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. W. C. Fields If a man has talent and can t use it, he s failed. If he uses only half of it, he ha s partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfa ction and triumph few men ever know. Thomas Wolfe Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know. Louisa May Alcott Belief creates the actual fact. William James When I am in my painting, I m not aware of what I m doing. Jackson Pollock It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. Confucius It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. Oscar Wilde You contain enough, why don t you let it out then? Walt Whitman By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon named Night On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule, From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space out of Time. Edgar Allen Poe A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. Herman Melville The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the li ving. T. S. Eliot I m not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books woul d help. A. N. Wilson Write your first draft with your heart. Rewrite with your head. Mike Rich Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen and not a shadow of an idea of wh at you are going to say. Francoise Sagan The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutiona ry spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right , for nothing has yet happened. Franz Kafka The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal. Aleister Crowley If you want to reveal something, you need to hide it properly first. Colin Greenland It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows. Epictetus Revision, once well done, becomes a sort of automatic itch which you scratch in the next work without thinking about it. Romulus Linney Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, the re would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. Rainer Maria Rilke Of course one should not drink much, but often. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. Jack London Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, w hen you criticize them, you re a mile away and you have their shoes. Jack Handy To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of sho re birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to th e sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be. Rachel Carson Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any othe r person can be. Jane Austen The human spirit is so great a thing that no man can express it; could we rightl y comprehend the mind of man nothing would be impossible to us upon the earth. Paracelcus Great writers are the saints for the godless. Anita Brookner Gentiles are people who eat mayonnaise for no reason. Robin Williams I try to work every day, even when I m not motivated. Mel Ramos The main question to a novel is did it amuse? It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing. Sydney Smith If I were a girl, I should be still in my first innocence. If I were a woman, I should always be giving birth in my soul to the eternal word. If I were a husban d, I should put up a stiff resistance to all evil. If I were a wife, I should ke ep faith with my dear one, whom I married. If I were a widow, I should be always longing for the one I loved. If I were a virgin, I should be reverently devout. If I were a servant maid, in humility I should count myself lower than God or a ny creature; and if I were a manservant, I should be hard at work, always servin g my Lord with my whole heart. But since of all these I am neither one, I am jus t a something among somethings, and so I go. Meister Eckhart I don t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn t true. Dorothy Parker Tap into what you don t want to say. Tap into that secret place, despite the agony , despite the personal pain, over and above the fatigue. Arthur Penn None of the writing is easy, but I no longer refuse to do it for fear that I ll fa il to get it right. It can never be right, I know; it can only be done. Nancy Mairs His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Arthur Conan Doyle To forget one s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity. Friedrich Nietzsche Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear, and devils, too. Graycie Harmon The more you say, the less people remember. Francois Fenelon You know how it is in the kid s book world; it s just bunny eat bunny. Unknown In any art form, generalities are useless. Zubin Mehta Writing is far too hard work to say what someone else wants me to. Jane Rule There are two kinds of sacrifices: the ordinary kind, and those performed by men who have first purified themselves. Heraclitus In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing. Oscar Wilde Scientific people are always curious, and I am going to be scientific. I keep sa ying to myself: What is it? What is it? It s something. It can t be nothing! I don t k now its name, so I call it Magic. I have never seen the sun rise, but Mary and D ickon have, and from what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pu shes it up and draws it. Sometimes since I ve been in the garden I ve looked up thro ugh the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if s omething were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is ma de out of Magic: leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squi rrels and people. So it must be all around us. Frances Hodgson Burnett Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything. Ivana Trump Art can t hurt you. Fred Babb Whenever you read a good book, it s like the author is right there, in the room ta lking to you, which is why I don t like to read good books. Jack Handy But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false? H. P. Lovecraft Is there no way out of the mind? Sylvia Plath Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. Joseph Conrad No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who wor k with him. Don t knock your friends. Don t knock your enemies. Don t knock yourself. Alfred Lord Tennyson The structure of myth exists in the mind and needs only be tapped. Deena Metzger So have I, said the stranger, a strong poetic turn. Epic poem ten thousand lines volution of July composed it on the spot Mars by day, Apollo by night bang the f ield-piece, twang the lyre. Charles Dickens re Adversity is the first path to truth. Lord Byron Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There s nothing like having a midg et for a butler. W. C. Fields Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed. E. M. Forster A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. Franz Kafka All fiction is for me a kind of magic and trickery make people believe something is true. Angus Wilson a confidence trick, trying to Life always spills over the rim of every cup. Boris Pasternak One who is caught in thought loses his original nature. All he knows are words a nd descriptions. When he sees the actual thing, he fails to perceive it. Dalai Lama I write because I like to write. Paddy Chayefsky The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of an idea. Thomas Mann I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have m ade safe for poets. The whole city is so lovely that you do not have to write it up to make it poetry; it is ready-made for you. But, I don t know the poetry writ ten in that city might not seem like poetry if read outside of the city. It woul d be like the jokes made when you were drunk; you have to get drunk again to app reciate them. Robert Frost Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Dorothy Parker Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is the re not some reason to fear I may be wrong? Jane Austen One cannot violate the promptings of one s nature without having that nature recoi l upon itself. Jack London The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. William James I m youth, I m joy, I m a little bird that has broken out of the egg. James M. Barrie One must work and dare if one really wants to live. Vincent Van Gogh The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not t o be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the tr ees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken someth ing within the heart that is beyond all knowledge. Anthony de Mello Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. Oliver Wendell Holmes Kiss me and you will see how important I am. Sylvia Plath In the world of words imagination is one of the forces of nature. Wallace Stevens It s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. Jack Handy This is where I begin to live my life, knowing that nothing matters, nothing eve r matters like the love you receive and the love you give. Bernice Ellis Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. Sir Winston Churchill For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem. Bishop Berkeley Any fool can make a rule. And every fool will mind it. Henry David Thoreau No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. Thomas Hardy I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I th ink I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I d like to be. E. M. Forster Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart. William Shakespeare That s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings. Alice Munro Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels. P. G. Wodehouse To have great poets, there must be great audiences. Walt Whitman If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. Benjamin Franklin He who worships a punishing God becomes a surrogate punisher. Hermaptios Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the o nes who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties. Bonnie Friedman And as to experience well, think how little some good poets have had, or how muc h some bad ones have. Elizabeth Bishop There are men that will make you books and turn them loose into the world with a s much dispatch as they would a dish of fritters. Miguel de Cervantes We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Joan Didion Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round a nd solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won. Ralph Waldo Emerson They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. Confucius I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way. Mark Twain A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all t he centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Friedrich Nietzsche For the cat is cryptic, and close to Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotte n cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle s lords, and heir to the se crets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she h ath forgotten. H. P. Lovecraft Beware of the need to be literal, for this often shrouds deeper knowledge. Deena Metzger The knower and the known are one. Meister Eckhart Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you. William Makepeace Thackeray The great art of life is sensation: to feel that we exist, even in pain. Lord Byron Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. Joseph Conrad The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going. Epictetus It takes a heap of loafing to write a book. Gertrude Stein I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or paint ing a picture, by simply molding one s inner life. And that too is a deed. Etty Hillesum Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words. Leonardo da Vinci Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in va in. Carl Jung All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth have not any subsistence without a mind. Bishop Berkeley Words have a longer life than deeds. Pindar Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within. Alfred Lord Tennyson If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid looking in a mirror, because I bet that will really throw you into a panic. Jack Handy Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure. Meister Eckhart A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. Miguel de Cervantes Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live. Thomas Wolf When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader fee l pity, try to be somewhat colder that seems to give a kind of background to ano ther s grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make. Anton Chekhov I write to find out what I m thinking about. Edward Albee The brotherhood of man is no mere poet s fancy; it is a most depressing and humili ating reality. Oscar Wilde An onion can make people cry, but there s never been a vegetable that can make peo ple laugh. Will Rogers The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between righ t and wrong. Carl Jung Teatime trying to write God! I have a brain like a peanut. a peanut, echoes in my head the insane song. John Dos Passos Found a peanut, found The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person. Robert Oppenheimer Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards . W. H. Auden A writer s inspiration is not just to create. He must eat three times a day. Pierre Beaumarchais Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. Rainer Maria Rilke Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? Ayn Rand Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the tru th, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselv es from our insane passion for the truth. Umberto Eco In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simp licity. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults. Samuel Johnson When I want to read a novel, I write one. Benjamin Disraeli People fear the unkown; what they should fear is the known. Deepak Chopra The least of things with meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of thin gs without it. Carl Jung At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my so ul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore. Kahlil Gibran Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the ey es wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. Raymond Chandler What we don t know, rather than what we know, can be the very core of story. Deena Metzger The most beautiful thing about capitalism is the incompetence of dishonesty. John Wall Our free will is fate. Oswald Spengler To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be h opelessly in love with spring. George Santayana Without darkness, there is no dream. John Ruskin Good writers are almost never dangerous. John Gardner Writing is not a genteel profession; it s quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty. Rosemary Mahoney Flowers wither not the Spring; Fathers perish not their love. Spirit gambols in the flesh Until what s mortal cannot dance. All that s good in you shall live, Survives the falling of the mask, And if God asks me who you are, I ll say that part that did not die. W. Hamnet Wall I am not very scrupulous, I own, when I have a good idea, how I came into posses sion of it. Lord Byron From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the poi nt that must be reached. Franz Kafka Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. W. C. Fields To make dictionaries is dull work. Samuel Johnson You ve really got to start hitting the books because it s no joke out here. Harper Lee The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ours elves. William Haxlitt The measure of a man is what he does with power. Pittacus Conscience makes egoists of us all. Oscar Wilde The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. Proust Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lu cky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling. Jack Handy Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celeb rate writing. Melinda Haynes Remember, a word is an invention, a symbol for an idea. Written text began as an artistic representation of a thought or event. Edward J. Fraughton At the root of our lives is a question, a series of questions, a quest, some fun damental concerns or obsessions; the mystery, the story, and the meaning of our lives reside there. A story also has a question at the core of it, and the quest ion leads to the mystery within the story. The deeper one goes into the story, t he more one learns, the more things are revealed, the deeper the mystery. Perhap s the story has no other function than to ask this question or to deepen the mys tery. Deena Metzger Those blessings that I have to give, I give you freely, and those I do not have to give, you are seeking on your own. Seth At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes. E. M. Forster Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and trava il. Theodore Dreiser Where there is no imagination there is no horror. Arthur Conan Doyle The wheel is come full circle. William Shakespeare The facts are always less than what really happened. Nadine Gordimer I always write with a Ticonderoga #2 pencil. I started out with it, and I ll go to that Great Bookstore in the Sky with one of those in my hand. Robert Ludlum I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop. Clarence Budington Kelland It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end. Ursula K. LeGuin Here s to alcohol, the cause of Homer Simpson and solution to all life s problems. Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to t he regulation of conscience. Adam Smith Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober. James Thurber Life is the childhood of immortality. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Democrats never agree on anything, that s why they re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans. Will Rogers Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. Carl Jung A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poe m points to nothing but itself. E. M. Forster Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it s the only way you can do anythin g really good. William Faulkner One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. Voltaire Whether it is done quickly or slowly, however splendid the results, the process of writing fiction is inherently, inevitably, indistinguishable from wasting tim e. Deborah Eisenberg Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced. Marquis de Sade Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state. John Barth There is no happiness in love except at the end of an English novel. Anthony Trollope It s sad that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs. Jack Handy The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his o wn face. William Makepeace Thackeray This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still. Joseph Conrad Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of ha bits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. William James A proverb is much matter distilled into few words. Buckminster Fuller If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comi c strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Fai thful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself wel l, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping aro und in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they esc ape. Ray Bradbury It s hard to be aggressive when you re confused. Vince Lombardi Dogs are philosophers. They soon forget. P. G. Wodehouse There is no substitute for craft. Art begins with craft, and there is no art unt il craft has been mastered. Anthony Burgess The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. Simone Weil That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees. Marcus Aurelius There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful sti rrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath. Herman Melville To Zeus all things are good, fair and just. Heraclitus My work is about emotions for which I have no words. Robert Sturman Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them day afte r day. Arthur Gordon You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. William Blake Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separatio n or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathologi cal. Anthony Storr When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order. Meister Eckhart When in doubt, go for the dick joke. Robin Williams Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec What a writer wants to do is not what he does. Jorge Luis Borges The writer s genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer s only stuff for sale. James Gunn The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable busi ness. John Steinbeck Be thankful we re not getting all the government we re paying for. Will Rogers The work was like peeling an onion. The outer skin came off with difficulty, but in no time you d be down to its innards, tears streaming from your eyes as more a nd more beautiful reductions became possible. Edward Blishen Few people have the imagination for reality. Goethe Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking. Horace Take one part Mercurii Solis, the preparation of which I have already taught in another place by its proper process. Draw off its airy water so that it becomes a subtle dust and calx. Then take two parts of our blessed oil, and pour the oil very slowly, drop by drop onto the dust of the Mercurii Solis, until everything has become absorbed. Put it in a vial, well sealed, into a heat of the first de gree of the oven of secrets, and let it remain there for ten days and nights. Yo u will then see your powder and oil quite dry, such that it has become a single piece of dust of a blackish grey colour. After ten days give it the second degre e of heat, and the grey and black colour will slowly change into a whiteness so that it becomes more or less white. And at the end of these ten days, the matter will take on a beautiful rose white. But this may be ignored. For this colour i s only due to the Mercurio Solis, that has swallowed up our blessed oil, and now covers it with the innermost part of its body. But by the power of the fire, ou r oil will again subdue such Mercurium Solis, and throw it into its innermost. A nd the oil with its very bright red colour will rule over it and remain on the o utside. Therefore it is time, when twenty days have passed, that you open the wi ndow of the third degree. The external white colour and force will then complete ly recede inwardly, and the internal red colour will, by the force of the fire, become external. Keep also this degree of fire for ten days, without increase or decrease. You will then see your powder, that was previously white, now become very red. But for the time being this redness may be ignored, for it is still un fixed and volatile; and at the end of these ten days, when the thirtieth day has passed, you should open the last window of the fourth degree of fire, Let it st ay in this degree for another ten days, and this very bright red powder will beg in to melt. Let it stay in flux for these ten days. And when you take it out you will find on the bottom a very bright red and transparent stone, ruby colored. Roger Bacon Writing is hard work and bad for the health. E. B. White What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? Ray Bradbury I still read everything aloud. I have a fundamental conviction that if a sentenc e cannot be read aloud with sincerity, conviction, and communicable emphasis, it s not a good sentence. Good writing requires good rhythms and good words. Richard Marius A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remo test centuries. Bishop Berkeley Life isn t fair. It s just fairer than death, that s all. William Goldman To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it s about, but the music the words make. Truman Capote It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wic kedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts. Carl Jung i do not put Collers what do not Belong. I Think it spoils The pictures. There h ave Been a lot of paintins spoiled By putin Collers where They do not Blong. Alfred Wallis Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hours will last. Alfred Lord Tennyson I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormen ting a respectable man. Jane Austen If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the chris tening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. Rachel Carson Shouldn t the philosopher be able to rise above a faith in grammar? Friedrich Nietzsche I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all. Lord Byron Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The p oorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. The best of us start from scratc h with every new book. Raymond Chandler I finished my play today. Three acts, six scenes, a masterpiece completed in a f ew weeks. The play only exists as a tiny scrawl in my notebooks things I carry a bout in my pockets. George Bernard Shaw Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact. Willa Cather I am not young enough to know everything. James M. Barrie Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to list en to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome. T. S. Eliot Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. William Wordsworth It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned in to. Jonathan Swift The one thing that don t abide by majority rule is a person s conscience. Harper Lee The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and sou ndest. Henry David Thoreau There s the wretched business of getting from lunch to supper. Virginia Woolf To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimensio n, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hat e, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called manki nd, have any existence at all. Only the human scenes and characters must have hu man qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, but when we cross t he line to the boundless and hideous unknown the shadow-haunted Outside we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold. H. P. Lovecraft Writing only leads to more writing. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt. Mark Twain Ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone. Oscar Wilde You must be prepared to work always without applause. Ernest Hemingway Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substa nce. Stanley Schmidt A prince who is not himself wise cannot be well advised. Machiavelli Too many words spoil the poem. John McEnulty Only the educated are free. Epictetus As vast as this space without is the tiny space within your heart: heaven and ea rth are found in it, fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and the constellation s, whatever belongs to you here below and all that doesn t, all this is gathered i n the tiny space within your heart. Chandogya Upanishad A text cannot say everything. It can only go as far as all words can go. Beyond them begins another zone, a zone of mystery, of silence, which one calls the atm osphere. Gaston Baty I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you wan t to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then n o matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together. Tad Williams Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy, the process of setting man free from men. Ayn Rand Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Rainer Maria Rilke Consider the daffodil. And while you re doing that, I ll be over here, looking throu gh your stuff. Jack Handy Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of our selves. Carl Jung Do the best you can, and don t take life too serious. Will Rogers In the dark time, the eye begins to see. Theodore Roethke I write, therefore, I am. Samuel Johnson By writing much, one learns to write well. Robert Southey Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself. Oscar Wilde Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Arthur Conan Doyle Nonsense and beauty have close connections. E. M. Forster From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain. Frank Herbert The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. Lord Byron Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. Dr Seuss If there are frontiers between the civilized and barbaric, between the meaningfu l and the unmeaning, they are not lines on a map nor are they regions of the ear th. They are boundaries of the mind alone. Ursula K. LeGuin Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves. C. Astrid Weber The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel is that it be intere sting. Henry James Prose wanders around with a lantern and laboriously schedules and verifies the d etails and particulars of a valley and its frame of crags and peaks, then poetry comes and lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash. Mark Twain The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth. Carl Jung We are alike in pickiness but not in the subject matter we are picking about. Rhonda Burtz The ego is the enemy because it is against love. When I look at myself, I don t lo ve others. When I want to occupy for myself what is yours, I become the killer o f my brother, like Cain killed Abel. When I want to satisfy myself, this satisfa ction is gained through sacrificing the freedom of the other. Then my ego become s my lord, my god, and there is no stronger temptation than this. Because to us, this ego may seem like a diamond. It has a shine like gold. But whatever is shi ning is not gold. The ego is just like a fire without light, a fire without warm th, a fire without life. It seems that it has many sides and many possibilities but what is this possibility? What is ego? Only the means by which I protect mys elf as if I were in a battle, as if every other person is my enemy, and the only thing I care about is winning the victory. Archimandrite Dionysios Greatness means going on, going on means going far, and going far means turning back. Lao Tzu A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. Henry David Thoreau Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can sto p it. Ernest Hemingway Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company. La Rouchefaucauld Live dangerously and you live right. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Make a point ever so clear, it is great odds that any man whose habits and the b ent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination. Bishop Berkeley When I say beautiful things, I m not necessarily living them; when I live them, th e beautiful thing is that words aren t necessary. Brock Tully I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I ju st want to write. P. G. Wodehouse Everyone has one good poem in his hidden head. Don Welch Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Alfred Lord Tennyson I suppose publishers are untrustworthy. They certainly look it. Oscar Wilde The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. Meister Eckhart The praise that comes from love does not make us vain, but more humble. James M. Barrie To live happily is an inward power of the soul. Marcus Aurelius Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. Walt Whitman Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. Gustave Flaubert I am a verb. Ulysses S. Grant I believe I hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance, but it isn t it s human. Erasmus It is impossible to discourage the real writers y, they re going to write. Sinclair Lewis they don t give a damn what you sa Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. Agatha Christie I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. Ralph Waldo Emerson The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble . They can never be solved but only outgrown. Carl Jung Art is utterance. Asterio Tecson Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand w ell. Jack London A fool and his money are soon elected. Will Rogers The arts are not decorative. They are essential to our comprehension of consciou sness and ourselves. Edward Albee Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue. Jack Woodford Follow your honest convictions and be strong. William Makepeace Thackeray Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief. For the world is a sacred object. Nothing is to be done to it. To do anything is to damage it. To seize it is to lose it. Lao Tzu He suffered occasionally from a rush of words to the head. Herbert Samuel The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech. Clifton Fadiman God: a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man s power to conceive. Ayn Rand He reproduced himself with humble objectivity, with the unquestioning matter-offact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there s another do g. Rainer Maria Rilke There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth. Charles Dickens I too love theories. They are so much more concrete than reality. P. Q. Wall There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make yo u wonder. Brian Aldiss Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait. Jean-Paul Sartre All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a stor y to live by. Religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need. Harvey Cox Happiness is your birthright. It shouldn t depend upon you achieving something. Steve Chandler When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils , of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was o ften a woman. Virginia Woolf It is the tortured who turn into torturers. Carl Jung The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Each paragraph is good in itself and there are some pages that are perfect, I fe el certain. But just because of this, it isn t getting on. It s a series of well-tur ned, ordered paragraphs which do not flow on from each other. I shall have to un screw them, loosen the joints, as one does with the masts of a ship when one wan ts the sail to take more wind. Gustave Flaubert When you see the same thing over and over again your brain expends less and less energy. Your mind already knows what it s seeing, so it doesn t make the effort to process the event again. Dr. Gregory Berns Death is only a larger kind of going abroad. Samuel Butler Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson To create something you must be something. Goethe I once had a rose named after me and was very flattered. But I was not so please d to read the description in the catalogue: No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. Eleanor Roosevelt Just because you re a perfectionist doesn t mean you re perfect. Jack Nicholson How can the lord of ten thousand chariots let his own person weigh less in the b alance than his land? Lao Tzu Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror. She has flowers that no forests know of, birds that no woodland possesse s. She makes and unmakes many worlds, and can draw the moon from heaven with a s carlet thread. Oscar Wilde If you could be freed from self, then you would have the nature of the highest a ngels as completely as you now have your own. Meister Eckhart Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and conc ealed. Kahlil Gibran The two most beautiful words in the English language are Check Enclosed. Dorothy Parker I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed shrink is o ur friend. Jack Handy It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit. William Makepeace Thackeray Why wouldn t you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yo urself? It s far more interesting to write about others. Susan Sontag Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head, and as you get older y ou become more skillful casting them. Gore Vidal I have just read your lousy review. You sound like a frustrated old man who neve r made a success, an eight ulcer man on a four ulcer job. I have never met you b ut if I do, you ll need a new nose. Harry S. Truman Your work is to discover your world and then with your all your heart give yours elf to it. Buddha My crown is called content; a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. William Shakespeare The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. Robert Frost Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horiz on s verge. Lord Byron One is certain of nothing but the truth of one s own emotions. E. M. Forster The bible says to love your enemies. Just for practice, why don t you try it out o n your friends? Will Rogers If the public likes you, you re good. Mickey Spillane Dancing is poetry with arms and legs. Charles Baudelaire Andy Warhol is the only genius I ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60. Gore Vidal Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and steri le. Sinclair Lewis I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about. Jean Jacques Rousseau You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are. Edward Albee Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not l augh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. Kahlil Gibran One s feelings waste themselves in words. They ought all to be distilled into acti ons and into actions which bring results. Florence Nightingale Earth s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on account o f that which conceals it. Paracelcus Go to your bosom: knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. William Shakespeare Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul. Charles Baudelaire Overcome fear, behold wonder. Richard Bach However great a man s natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once. Jean Jacques Rousseau The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the pl ay instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object s it loves. Carl Jung When an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you ans wer it. Eric Maisel The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. Meister Eckhart Never underestimate something born in a manger. Katrina Kern The wound is the resource. Brugh Joy I have to use words to say it. Words that violate and betray what they seem to b e making possible. Words, in other words, that are sadly not to be trusted. Selima Hill The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Oscar Wilde Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow In argument, similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothi ng. Franz Kafka We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see. Bishop Berkeley How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! Jane Austen The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. William James Perfect Bodies as Sol and Luna are endued with a perfect seed; and therefore und er the hard crust of the perfect Metals the Perfect Seed lies hid. And he that k nows how to take it out by the Philosophers Solution, hath entered upon the royal highway; for in Gold the seeds of Gold doth lie, though buried in Obscurity. The Hermetic Arcanum There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make. James M. Barrie Whatever becomes of the work, the occupation of writing has been a real boon to me. It took me out of dark and desolate reality into an unreal but happier regio n. Charlotte Bronte I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myse lf. Tom Stoppard Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than wha t happens. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Loss is nothing but change, and change is Nature s delight. Marcus Aurelius That s very nice if they want to publish you, but don t pay too much attention to it . Just continue to write. Natalie Goldberg The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man wou ld have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. Erasmus Never assume the obvious is true. William Safire I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today. Ken Wilber There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature? Charles Baudelaire A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are. Gore Vidal One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as i t will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand. Edward Albee All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. Kahlil Gibran Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth. Will Rogers You don t talk about paintings, you look at them. Pierre-Auguste Renoir Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. Wolcott Gibbs It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. Jack Handy I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual. Lord Byron Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Epictetus Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of you th s many burdens; as we get older we are exempted it from more and more, and floa t upward in our heedlessness, singing Gratia Dei sum quod sum. John Updike He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The desire to write grows with writing. Erasmus The writer who cares more about words than about story characters, action, setti ng, atmosphere is unlikely to create a vivid and continuous dream. John Gardner To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. Sri Aurobindo Some days I m a particle, some days I m a wave. David Kern Every beast is driven to pasture by a blow. Heraclitus It s nothing until I call it. The Umpire The artist s only responsibility is his art. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies. William Faulkner Beware of self-indulgence. If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego. David Brin Jade is praised as precious, but its strength is being stone. Lao Tzu Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don t know and I don t care . William Safire Winter is not a season, it s an occupation. Sinclair Lewis Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. Gore Vidal Sweet are the uses of adversity. William Shakespeare Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Kahlil Gibran The Vessel of Hermes which the Stoicks have concealed is not a Necromantical Ves sel, but it is the Measure of your Fire. Mary the Prophetess It s no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous. John Updike Always be a poet, even in prose. Charles Baudelaire All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we t hen to depreciate imagination? Carl Jung Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth. Benjamin Disraeli You really ought to read more books but come apart on one side. F. Scott Fitzgerald you know, those things that look like blocks Every book should have its own voice ourself. Mary Lee Settle what you hear in your head as you read to y Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? Marcel Marceau Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. William Shakespeare Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone. Jean Jacques Rousseau Grace is not a stationary thing; it is always found in a Becoming. Meister Eckhart I fear those big words which make us so unhappy. James Joyce Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty o f a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. Oscar Wilde A man s most open actions have a secret side to them. Joseph Conrad Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. William James Hence Hermes calls fire the father of the whole world, because it is the Sun of our Art, and air, Moon, and water ascend from it. The earth is the nurse of the Stone. When the earth receives the rays of the Sun and Moon, a new body is born, like a new foetus in the mother s womb. The earth receives and digests the light of Sun and Moon, and imparts food to its foetus day by day, till it becomes grea t and strong, and puts off its blackness and defilement, and is changed to a dif ferent colour. This, child, which is called our daughter, represents our Stone, which is born anew of the Sun and Moon, when the spirit, or the water that ascen ded, is gradually transmuted into the body, and the body is born anew, and grows and increases in size like the foetus in the mother s womb. Thus the Stone is gen erated from the first substance, which contains the four elements; it is brought forth by two things, the body and the spirit; the wind bears it in its womb, fo r it carries the Stone upward from earth to heaven, and down again from heaven t o earth. Thus the Stone receives increase from above and from below, and is born a second time, just as every other foetus is generated in the maternal womb; as all created things bring forth their young, even so does the air, or wind, brin g forth our Stone. Unknown Where words fail, music speaks. Hans Christian Andersen There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face rea lity; and then there are those who turn one into the other. Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he c annot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it. Maurice Blanchot Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. Norman Mailer If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and at testing her eternity. Herman Melville Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them togeth er, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose a nd particular skill. Edmund Morrison Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes. Benjamin Disraeli I can t stand cheap people. It makes me real mad when someone says something like, Hey, when are you going to pay me that $100 you owe me? or Do you have that 50 buc ks you borrowed? Man, quit being so cheap! Jack Handy Words make love with one another. Andre Breton There is one reason, and one reason only, that readers get excited about a novel : great storytelling. Donald Maass Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its u ltimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the convi ction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper . Isaac Bashevis Singer Art is the poetry of how we all might live, and economics the prose of how we do . James Wall Sr. It is harder to hide feelings we have than to feign those we lack. La Rouchefaucauld Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learnin g. Benjamin Disraeli A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people s patience. John Updike Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven t committed . Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The water and the air will ascend first, and afterwards the element of fire, whi ch expert artists recognise. Paracelsus Give me a condor s quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand! Herman Melville Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold . Navarre Scott Momaday He looked like a halibut which had been asked by another halibut to lend it a co uple of quid till next Wednesday. P. G. Wodehouse There s luck in art. There s the gift. You can t earn that. But you can learn skill, y ou can earn it. You can learn to deserve your gift. Ursula K. Le Guin It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. Leonardo da Vinci Beware the hobby that eats. Benjamin Franklin Fear is the mother of morality. Friedrich Nietzsche No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. Abraham Lincoln Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary th ings, and nothing else. C. S. Lewis The The The The great great great great square has no corners. vessel is never finished. tone is barely heard. thought can t be thought. Lao Tzu And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in t he running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. William Shakespeare Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wis dom created nothing under the sun in vain. Kahlil Gibran You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts. Nikki Giovanni Gardens are not made by singing Rudyard Kipling Oh, how beautiful, and sitting in the shade. Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect o f illusion. Robert Burton Those people who recognize that imagination is reality s master we call sages, and those who act upon it we call artists or lunatics. Tom Robbins If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away. Victor Hugo Once we choose hope, everything is possible. Christopher Reeve Tension is wonderful for making people laugh. John Cleese The meaning of being only becomes apparent in events. Alvin Kernan To be a writer is to sit down at one s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start f rom the breastbone just plain going at it. John Hersey There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others. Nikolai Gogol Mistakes are the portals of discovery. James Joyce He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked. Voltaire My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They re not written vicariously: th ey come out of actual suffering, real madness. Theodore Roethke The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. Rudyard Kipling Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. Ursula K. Le Guin If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don t do it, and it won t happen. Erasmus I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life that is to say, over 35 there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. Carl Jung Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it. Rudyard Kipling Craft enables art. Ursula K. Le Guin Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency . John Updike Where every something, being blent together, turns to a wild of nothing. William Shakespeare Prohibition is better than no liquor at all. Will Rogers Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout. Bishop Berkeley Perhaps the most important word in success and happiness is the word ask. Brian Tracy I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. Oscar Wilde If you want to write it your own way, that s the chance you take. Marchette Chute Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought. Daphne DuMaurier I have always had the ability to attach my demons to my chariot. Ingmar Bergman Everything we feel is made of Time. All the beauties of life are shaped by it. Peter Shaffer Listen to what you know instead of what you fear. Richard Bach I am a part of all I have read. John Kieran As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matter s. Seneca To live till you die is to live long enough. Lao Tzu There are moments when an object, a person, a living creature is utterly present and naked, is utterly itself, and this startling moment can only be called beau ty. This presents a dilemma. Is the tree showing itself to me, or am I allowing myself to see? Deena Metzger I m not alone when I m writing ere helping me. Sir Edward William Stafford the language itself, like a kind of trampoline, is th So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. Longfellow If you think you re boring your audience, go slower not faster. Gustav Mahler Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning: if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault. In the very best styles you read page after page w ithout noticing the medium. Samuel Tayler Coleridge Everyone is more or less mad on one point. Rudyard Kipling It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is. Erasmus There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. Gore Vidal Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things. Anne Sullivan Soon or late love is his own avenger. Lord Byron For the Creator, there is no poverty. Rainer Maria Rilke Everything that doesn t kill you, makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story. Tapani Bagge There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things. Gerard Manley Hopkins The presence of beauty heals. Deena Metzger All that is, isn t. All that isn t, is. Scott Jeffries All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them. Jean Anouilh Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the cr eatures of God are free. Mark Twain We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our fo llies it is the first law of nature. Voltaire The men who succeed are the few who have the ambition and willpower to develop t hemselves. Robert Burton The great way is low and plain, but people like shortcuts over the mountains. Lao Tzu Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women a nd young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and lead him constant ly into danger. Jean Jacques Rousseau The earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your h air. Kahlil Gibran History is not another name for the past. It is the name for stories about the p ast. Alan John Percivale Taylor Art never expresses anything but itself. Oscar Wilde I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship. Louisa May Alcott Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny. Frank Zappa Getting even is one reason for writing. William Gass Look if you like, but you will have to leap. W. H. Auden Employ your time in improving yourself by other men s writings so that you shall c ome easily by what others have labored hard for. Socrates The fool wonders, the wise man asks. Benjamin Disraeli Things are beautiful if you love them. Jean Anouilh It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with tha t of man. Henry David Thoreau I even shower with my pen, in case any ideas drip out of the waterhead. Graycie Harmon Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. Winston Churchill It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry. Nikolai Gogol He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper ; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished. William Shakespeare Coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. Aristotle When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean Humpty Dumpty neither more nor less. Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams. Charles Baudelaire There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by fin ding what we suspect. Henry David Thoreau Happiness is no vague dream. Of that I now feel certain. George Sand The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and ca lm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their co nflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results. Carl Jung Art is either plagarism or revolution. Paul Gaugain It is not study alone that produces a writer; it is intensity. Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear nothing? William Wordsworth The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I t hought, and attended to my answer. Henry David Thoreau It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned up to 50 words of English, no human has been reported to have learned dolphinese . Carl Sagan Better not take a dog on the space shuttle, because if he sticks his head out wh en you re coming home his face might burn up. Jack Handy Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, gener ous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed. Geoffrey Chaucer Literature takes shape and life in the body, in the wombs of the mother tongue: always: and the Fathers of Culture get anxious about paternity. They start talki ng about legitimacy. They steal the baby. They ensure by every means that the ar tist, the writer, is male. This involves intellectual abortion by centuries of w omen artists, infanticide of works by women writers, and a whole medical corps o f sterilizing critics working to purify the Canon, to reduce the subject matter and style of literature to something Ernest Hemingway could have understood. Ursula K. Le Guin The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument. Henry David Thoreau Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritan ces, happens almost exclusively in newspapers? Jean Anouilh The true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastlines s is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancie nt, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of s trength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection o f the hideous. H. P. Lovecraft Look in my face; my name is Might-Have-Been. I am also called No-More, Too-Late, Farewell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two diff erent kinds of right. Peter Shaffer Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Henry David Thoreau Pick today s fruits, not relying on the future in the slightest. Horace Don t use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Teresa Nielsen Hayden A good name is seldom got by giving it to oneself. William Wycherly Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools th e way to dusty death. William Shakespeare To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Henry David Thoreau The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. Edwin Schlossberg In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encou rage the others. Voltaire Nature doesn t make long speeches. Lao Tzu Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. John Updike Literature doesn t matter. The only thing that matters is money and getting your t eeth fixed! Delmore Schwartz I spend half my time trying to learn the secrets of other writers to the expression of my own thoughts. Shirley Ann Grau to apply them We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see. Henry David Thoreau Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming O Thou with whom are all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, out of whose infinit e mind this universal frame sprang forth in a moment of time, grant unto me grac e to know Thy blessedness and Thy goodness. In no other way shall I come to the knowledge of the Blessed Stone. George Ripley Women want love to be a novel, men a short story. Daphne du Maurier A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie. Erasmus I think we all have a need to know what we do not need to know. William Safire All that spirits desire, spirits attain. Kahlil Gibran The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the stor y of what appeared to happen. Mary Roberts Rinehart To grow in craft is to increase the breadth of what I can do, but art is the dep th, the passion, the desire, the courage to be myself and myself alone. Pat Schneider Only that day dawns to which we are awake. Henry David Thoreau The ear is the avenue to the heart. Voltaire Read something luminous at night. Edmund Wilson More energy, less taste! Remember, keep moving! Robert Frank Use the fewest words to sing your song. Rowland Hill Story is change. Ursula K. Le Guin The crux of a weird tale is something which could not possibly happen. H. P. Lovecraft We are energy beings. Jill Bolte Taylor It is not enough merely to love literature, if one wishes to spend one s life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seem s to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forev er on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possibility of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear. Harlan Ellison One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemming ot hers. Molière These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for t he love of Man and in praise of God, and I d be a damn fool if they weren t. Dylan Thomas Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. William Butler Yeats The hand is an instrument for using instruments; and the mind is a form for usin g forms. Aristotle The sky above the port was the color of television. William Gibson If suffer we must, let us suffer on the heights. Victor Hugo I d rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are; because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star. I d rather be a has-been than a might-have-been by far; fo r a might-have-been has never been, but a has-been was once an are. Milton Berle The best kind of writing, and the biggest thrill in writing, is to suddenly read a line from your typewriter that you didn t know was in you. Larry L. King The brain that doesn t feed itself, eats itself. Gore Vidal It might seem that the writer needs the gift of mimicry, like an impersonator, t o achieve this variety of voices. But it isn t that. It s more like what a serious a ctor does, sinking self in character-self. It s a willingness to be the characters , letting what they think and say rise from inside them. It s a willingness to sha re control with one s creation. Ursula K. Le Guin Stupidity is no excuse for not thinking. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. T. S. Eliot My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. John Keats He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. Ralph Waldo Emerson Satire is tragedy plus time. Lenny Bruce Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. Henry David Thoreau A notepad by the bedside accounts for half the earnings of my livelihood. Ever Garrison Don t explain why it works; explain how you use it. Steven Brust Pride is still aiming at the best abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; Aspiring to be angels men rebel. Alexander Pope The most effective effort is continuing effort, which patience makes possible. Unknown Protest crying is very hard to soothe. Dr. Judith K. Nelson To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands int o life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death. Jean Anouilh Illusion is the first of all pleasures. Voltaire The main thing is to take a blank sheet of paper and write the first sentence. F rom that first sentence springs the second, by some miracle, and then the subjec t emerges what the critics call the basic concept or the conception of the work. Valentin Katayev Think you re escaping and run into yourself. James Joyce An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. Rudyard Kipling Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly. Edward Albee Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of wo rds connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Gloria Naylor Writing itself is an act of faith, and nothing else. E. B. White Living people are soft and tender. Corpses are hard and stiff. Lao Tzu Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. Charles Baudelaire The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply. Kahlil Gibran Silence is the mother of truth. Benjamin Disraeli Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings; Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change. Gerard Manley Hopkins Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to t he making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart All nature is but art unknown to thee. Alexander Pope The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. William Butler Yeats To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow s pirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. Ursula K. Le Guin The oldest, shortest words Pythagoras yes and no are those which require the most thought. I always write the end of everything first. Then I go back to the beginning. I m ean, it s always nice to know where you re going, is my theory. Truman Capote Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. But not necessarily in that order . Robert Silverberg There is no Lenny Bruce what should be, there is only what is. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. Oscar Wilde Sometimes I think I d be better off dead. No, wait, not me, you. Jack Handy I never started from ideas but always from character. Ivan Turgenev Name names. Make your writing physical. Use lots of exact nouns. Food is an idea ; black-bean soup is a thing. Naming not only makes the writing more visceral, i t makes the reader trust you. And use your own expertise, whatever insider infor mation you have. Use words like soffit, draw shave, spit valve. David Long Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. John Keats When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person. Daphne du Maurier And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I th ink children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy. Peter Shaffer It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. Charles Dickens Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci I am two fools I know, for loving and for saying so. John Donne Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. Dionysius the Elder The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is se t to human reason where it must halt. Maimonides Speaking openly is the gift we give each other. Deena Metzger Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what th ey seem to be. Hubert Humphrey God s finger touched him, and he slept. Alfred Lord Tennyson It is better to be alone than in bad company. George Washington Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much p erforms much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. Vincent Van Gogh It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can t do anything else, read all that you can. Jane Hamilton Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Barbara Kingsolver Fantasy doesn t have to be fantastic. Terry Pratchett I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. Walt Whitman Some nights, I just want to pour out my soul into a glass and drink it. Don Kraus A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always re ading. Jeremy Collier A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag ha s been left. Alexander Pope When one burns one s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes. Dylan Thomas Fictional characters soon take on a life of their own. They run with the bit bet ween their teeth. Jay Parini The vague is more dangerous than the arid. Theodore Roethke For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the pow er of speech to stir men s blood; I only speak right on. William Shakespeare If writing seems hard, it s because it is hard. William Zinsser Let s have some new cliches. Samuel Goldwyn The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a p ool that nobody s fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted b y the mind. Katherine Mansfield I pay no attention whatever to anybody s praise or blame. I simply follow my own f eelings. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart In the exploration of the unconscious we come upon very strange things, from whi ch a rationalist turns away in horror, claiming afterward that he did not see an ything. Carl Jung Temper is a weapon we hold by the blade. James M. Barrie In a good story, all the necessary elements are present and all the extraneous e lements have been removed nothing is forced or arbitrary; it has an organic form . Deena Metzger In our wisdom let us not forget, it is the pause that creates the music. Kathleen Arnason Mu. Joshu Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. Juvenal We don t come into this world, we grow out of it. Wayne Dyer I cannot help it Alfred de Musset in spite of myself, infinity torments me. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. Bring me the fin est simile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a si ngle word which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent an alogy. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dar k to our success. Henry David Thoreau Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don t have for som ething they don t need. Will Rogers God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun. Buckminster Fuller Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as et ernally established. Rudyard Kipling I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe in life. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for reveal ing them to the trees. Kahlil Gibran In Heaven there is no religion, thank God. Mahatma Gandhi The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences every thing, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with c reative lust. George Bellows Anyone who has got a library and a garden wants for nothing. Cicero It is always good when one has two irons in the fire. Francis Beaumont It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwar ds his own airy citadel. John Keats The heart is forever inexperienced. Henry David Thoreau Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. Benjamin Disraeli No blame. I Ching Too much verbal stimulation causes the work to suffer. Gene Black If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might , if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. Jack Handy Your words are the greatest power you have. The words you choose and their use e stablish the life you experience. Sonia Croquette All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margi n fades for ever and forever when I move. Alfred Lord Tennyson You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Elbert Hubbard Every word has two existences, as a spoken word and a written. A word exists as truly for the eye as for the ear. Richard Chenevix Trench So suddenly have you cleared your brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughte r given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me seem no less than Homer s gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas befo re, you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an oracle. Erasmus When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. Audre Lorde He who has never made a mistake never made a discovery. Samuel Smiles There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright. Dylan Thomas A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence. Joseph Addison In not wanting is stillness. In stillness all under heaven rests. Lao Tzu A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a c ounselor, a multitude of counselors. Charles Baudelaire Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Carl Jung I write the story that nobody reads. Someday, I m going to write it in German to s ee if anyone notices. Rick Reilly The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it. Umberto Eco In extremis, things reveal their nature and become visible. Paracelcus The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must gro w by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfami liar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that it isn t in the dictionary although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no a uthor ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. Ambrose Bierce A great rock is not disturbed by the wind. Dalai Lama For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken Madness is not the result of uncertainty, but certainty. Friedrich Nietzsche Art for my sake. D. H. Lawrence Civilisation s greatest single invention is the sentence. John Banville Only the most foolish of mice would hide in a cat s ear, but only the wisest of ca ts would think to look there. Andrew Mercer Along the way, there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation a nd a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hy sterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you ve nailed that particul ar sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane h uman could read without vomiting. But when you re in the zone, spinning words like plates, there s a deep sense of satisfaction. Hari Kunzru The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is t he original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for ano ther. Thomas Carlyle The future has already arrived. It s just not evenly distributed yet. William Gibson The soul s joy lies in doing. Percy Bysshe Shelley Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth . Benjamin Disraeli People with low self-esteem ought to be ashamed of themselves. Bill Wall I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction. Will Self The weak can never forgive. Mahatma Gandhi Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. James Allen Straightforward words seem paradoxical. Lao Tzu These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea t o express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that del iberation cannot interfere. Bill Evans Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Ingrid Bengis Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his th oughts uses an iron which has cooled. He cannot inflame the minds of his audienc e. Henry David Thoreau The most positive men are the most credulous. Alexander Pope Poetry should appear almost a remembrance. John Keats It s not what you look at that matters, it s what you see. Henry David Thoreau I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened. Mark Twain We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. Kahlil Gibran There is but one art, to omit! Robert Louis Stevenson I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters o f earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science and words are but the signs of ideas. Samuel Johnson Is anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others? Voltaire Everyone s life is a fairy tale written by God s fingers. Hans Christian Andersen We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted fo r us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to tak e back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. Hildegard von Bingen In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media valida te reality. If you don t believe this, just think how many times you ve described so me real event as being just like a movie. Brad Holland Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat kee p time with short steps. Hans Christian Andersen What we wish, we readily believe. Demosthenes I never knew a writer who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable. Samuel Butler Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yoursel f do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or n ot. Thomas Henry Huxley As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence , I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best an d truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to m e, but is indeed very soothing and consoling. And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart There s a great power in words, if you don t hitch too many of them together. Josh Billings Listen, young man. Forget all about your books and machine-made current associat ions. H. P. Lovecraft San Francisco is a mad city inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane peop le whose women are of a remarkable beauty. Rudyard Kipling To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know. Jean Jacques Rousseau It s easy to sit there and say you d like to have more money. And I guess that s what I like about it. It s easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting th at money. Jack Handy Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. Marcus Aurelius The Seven Principles of Huna: Ike: The world is what you think it is. Makia: Energy flows where attention goes. Aloha: To love is to be happy with. Manava: Now is the moment of power. Mana: All power comes from within. Kala: All is limitless. Pono: Effectiveness is the measure of truth. Unknown Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intel ligence and make it a soul? John Keats Man: a being in search of meaning. Plato Writing is not primarily escape, but use. Demosthenes I have revered always not crude verbosity, but holy simplicity. Saint Jerome Clean underwear is a waste. Ford Anderson Postmodernism cost literature its audience. Scott Turow It is unwise to be too sure of one s own wisdom. Mahatma Gandhi Men are born to succeed, not to fail. Henry David Thoreau Bring down that which is above by means of the light. To ascend take from darkne ss into light that which is below by means of light. This will transform the spi ritual energy as it flows from the source and integrates all the islands, giving peace. This will affect you profoundly, and change your life bringing illuminat ion, and you will feel the delightful supreme fire. Kahuna Kapihe Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes ards. Robert Burton bast If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and be come merely machines for eating and for earning money. John Updike There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a hum an being. James Joyce All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them. Walt Disney People are only doing the best they can with the resources they have available. NLP saying Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beau ty, make flowers bloom even on the edge of the precipice. Margaret Fuller Men have been chained to hideous walls and other strange anchors but few have kn own such suffering and bitterness as those who have been bound to pens. Charles Dickens Pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Alexander Pope Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, s o, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satis faction from a single aspiration. Sigmund Freud Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magi c in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work w ill be completed. Jean Anouilh Your library is your paradise. Erasmus Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. Hans Christian Andersen How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. Herbert Spencer It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe man not to wake but sleep. you might as well tell a Lord Byron To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least importa nt and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. Arthur Conan Doyle Your battles inspired me not the obvious material battles but those that were fo ught and won behind your forehead. James Joyce A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankin d. Isaac Bashevis Singer When one s thoughts are neither frivolous nor flippant, when one s thoughts are neit her stiff-necked nor stupid, but rather, are harmonious they habitually render p hysical calm and deep insight. Hildegard von Bingen To remind a man of the good turns you have done him is very much like a reproach . Demosthenes When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. Gilgamesh The part I enjoy is the re-writing. Increasingly, I enjoy the dullest, most cler ical stages of the process. Having said that, there always comes a point, after I ve amassed enough material and can start knocking it into shape, when I begin lo oking forward to working on something. Geoff Dyer The greatest instrument of moral good is the imagination. Percy Bysshe Shelley The squirrel you kill in jest dies in earnest. Henry David Thoreau Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself. André Gide In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writ ing because only that is worth writing about, worth the sweat and the agony. William Faulkner I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I m one of the world s great rewriters . James A. Michener Life is God s novel. Let him write it. Isaac Bashevis Singer What is your original face, the face you had before your parents were born? Zen koan Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye. William Gibson Nothing of him doth fade but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and st range. William Shakespeare We don t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anaïs Nin The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit not by want. Men do not become tyrants so as not to suffer cold. Aristotle I can only gesture at what makes a story good. Leonard Michaels If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alon e to make answer. Voltaire Well done is better than well said. Benjamin Franklin Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate br ings you together, but do so with all your heart. Marcus Aurelius Concerning the true and First Matter of Metals: the first matter of metals is tw ofold, and one without the other cannot create a metal. The first and principal substance is the moisture of air mingled with warmth. This substance the Sages h ave called Mercury, and in the philosophical sea it is governed by the rays of t he Sun and the Moon. The second substance is the dry heat of the earth, which is called Sulphur. But as this substance has always been kept a great mystery, let us declare it more fully, and especially its weight. Michael Sendivogius Art is the lie that tells the truth. Pablo Picasso Fame was like a drug, but what was even more like a drug were the drugs. Homer Simpson Get your facts first, and then you can distort Mark Twain em as much as you please. Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who wil l deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. Maimonides Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself. Harlan Ellison The bluebird carries the sky on his back. Henry David Thoreau First you have to get up and then you have to keep on going. Cameron Hughes Show, don t tell. Henry James A stiff apology is a second insult. G. K. Chesterton The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and comma nd of language is the fruit of exercise. Edward Gibbon My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God. Hildegard von Bingen Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. Mahatma Gandhi About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to st eal with good judgement. Henry Wheeler Shaw Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. Voltaire Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals y our sick self. Kahlil Gibran As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. June Jordan I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children s childr en, because I don t think children should be having sex. Jack Handy The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem th ose who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche Art is never finished, only abandoned. Leonardo da Vinci Fear doesn t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessit y, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. Steven Pressfield For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasu res are in store. Isaac Bashevis Singer Poetry is an expression, through human language restored to it essential rhythm, of the mysteriousness of existence. Stéphane Mallarmé To live in the world of creation to get into it and stay in it to frequent and h aunt it to think intensely and fruitfully to woo combinations and inspirations i nto being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditations this is the onl y thing. Henry James The Creatures in the School: Do not worry them. Do not vex them. Do not bother them. Sumerian signpost All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. Miyamoto Musashi Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often. Mae West Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. Percy Bysshe Shelley Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can wr ite will be the best you are. Henry David Thoreau You can t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. Nikolai Gogol Something is missing in my heart tonight That has made made my eyes so soft And my voice so tender And my need of God so absolutely clear. Hafiz of Persia I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, Ho w do you do it? How do you get started? It s so difficult. I told him, I don t know b ut whatever you do don t stop. Just keep on going. Benny Goodman Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. John Keats Silence is the mother of truth. Benjamin Disraeli We take in the words and move on, but are somehow changed by them. Karen Phinney Pornography is man s refuge from sex. Bill Wall At times I think and at times I am. Paul Valery The meaning of life is that it stops. Franz Kafka We know what we are, but know not what we may be. William Shakespeare When I realize that every task can be an act of worship, even the tasks I despis e take on new value. Norman Prather Poetry is nothing but healthy speech. Henry David Thoreau Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the p rocess. Peter Shaffer Be the valley of the world. Lao Tzu She danced the dance of flames and fire, she danced the dance of swords and spea rs, she danced the dance of stars and the dance of space, and then she danced th e dance of flowers in the wind. Khalil Gibran I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. Mae West I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson One has to live a life that creates a writer. Erno Paasilinna Before you use a fancy word, make room for it. Joseph Joubert Don t take life so serious. It ain t no-hows permanent. Walt Kelly There will never be another now I ll make the most of today. There will never be a nother me I ll make the most of myself. Helen Keller The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Marcus Aurelius He said, You have pigs in this poem; pigs are not poetic. I got up and walked out of that class and never went back. Carolyn Kizer You have to know the human heart. Thom Jones Even Napoleon had his Watergate. Yogi Berra We re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. Japanese proverb But you know, where did the Brontes go to college? Where did George Eliot go to college? Where did Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington go? Did George Washington go to college? This idea which we now have that people ought to have these credentials is really ridiculous. Where did Homer go to college? Jamaica Kincaid Mystery is the basic element of all works of art. Luis Buñuel Make the reader think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are relea sed from weak specifications. Henry James Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic k nowledge. H.G. Wells If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of me at? John Cleese Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in. Katharine Hepburn A stream cannot rise about its source. African proverb One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. G. K. Chesterton Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it s in music or in life, somethin g as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance. Benny Goodman I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. Hafiz of Persia I always picture myself as that person at a cocktail party standing in the corne r and watching. Neil Simon Be not a slave of words. Thomas Carlyle Fairy tale brings a larger dimension into our lives, but myth takes us beyond ou rselves. Deena Metzger The last of the human freedoms is to choose one s attitude in any given set of cir cumstances. Victor Frankl There are many reasons for this unease. One of them is a fundamental discomfort with narrative itself, and involves admitting to yourself that you derive your b asic pleasure not from knowing what happens next, but from arrested time or even tlessness. Amit Chaudhuri Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar ob jects be as if they were not familiar. Percy Bysshe Shelley When man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must b e able to comprehend everything. Maimonides Why shouldn t we give our teachers a license to obtain software, all software, any software, for nothing? William Gibson Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. Henry David Thoreau I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy. Charles Baudelaire In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you r e a great writer, you must say that you are. Gore Vidal If the sex scene doesn t make you want to do it been written right. Sloan Wilson whatever it is they re doing it hasn t It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen . A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brillia nt passage so long as it doesn t advance the story. Frank Yerby I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out that I d just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway. Jack Handy No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another whi ch suits it better. René Magritte A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands ca n read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books. G. I. Gurdjieff Sigh. So much to do. So few people to do it for me. Paula Brett The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin s. Marianne Faithfull Perceive that which cannot be seen by the eye. Miyamoto Musashi Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man s thinking or his writing. Isaac Bashevis Singer Take mineral Cinnabar and prepare it in the following manner. Cook it with rain water in a stone vessel for three hours. Then purify it carefully, and dissolve it in Aqua Regis, which is composed of equal parts of vitriol, nitre, and sal am moniac. Another formula is vitriol, saltpetre, alum, and common salt. Distil thi s in an alembic. Pour it on again, and separate carefully the pure from the impu re thus. Let it putrefy for a month in horse-dung; then separate the elements in the following manner. If it puts forth its signal, commence the distillation by means of an alembic with a fire of the first degree. The water and the air will ascend; the fire and the earth will remain at the bottom. Afterwards join them again, and gradually treat with the ashes. So the water and the air will again a scend first, and afterwards the element of fire, which expert artists recognise. The earth will remain in the bottom of the vessel. This collect there. It is wh at many seek after and few find. Paracelcus The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything peop le tell them. Demosthenes If a man s character is to be abused, there s nobody like a relative to do the busin ess. Alexander Pope The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau What wound did ever heal but by degrees? William Shakespeare Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. Kahlil Gibran This is the most autobiographical song I ve ever written. I m thankful I had the pre sence of mind never to put any words to it. Bennett Williams A critic is a man who knows the way but can t drive the car. Kenneth Tynan No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth. Harry Houdini The chief beginning of evil is goodness in excess. Menander The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thi rty years of his life. Muhammad Ali I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it. Mae West Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale. Hans Christian Andersen To me, who has written for most of her adult life, in a number of genres and wit h wildly varying degrees of enjoyment and/or misery , it s likely that writing is a con scious variant of a deep-motivated unconscious activity, like dreaming. Joyce Carol Oates Soul meets soul on lovers lips. Percy Bysshe Shelley Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Henry David Thoreau I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence. George Eliot Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? Marcell Marceau Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. T. S. Eliot Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them. Carlos Fuentes My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems. Doris Grumbach He never gave utterance in words to his feelings of the glories of nature. Words were not his instruments of expression colour was the only medium open to him. J. M. MacCallum The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what t hey are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art. Oscar Wilde If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examin e it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselv es. Carl Jung Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument. J. B. Priestley The poet is a man who lives by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse. Henry David Thoreau The great artist is the simplifier. Henri Frederic Amiel Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid pers on to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time. Kurt Vonnegut I came to understand that the words executive and corporate never belong next to the word chef. Thomas Keller He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met. Abraham Lincoln Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper. Kahlil Gibran Being is born of nothing. Lao Tzu A woman s guess is much more accurate than a man s certainty. Rudyard Kipling He ne er is crowned with immortality who fears to follow where airy voices lead. John Keats On the neck of a young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. Hafiz of Persia Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it s time to pause and ref lect. Mark Twain Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling aro und on his floor for three days looking for the right word. Dorothy Parker Psyche creating itself, entering the labyrinth of the inner world, confronting g ood and evil, sexuality, encountering the lost feminine, and reconciling the opp osites, life and death, dark and light, male and female, upper world and underwo rld, barrenness and creativity these are the central focuses of the Eleusinian M ysteries, and they are the quintessential concerns of the larger story. Deena Metzger All pitchers are liars or crybabies. Yogi Berra As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown. René Magritte No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth. Harry Houdini Even God lends a hand to honest boldness. Menander People often say that motivation doesn t last. Well, neither does bathing. That s wh y we recommend it daily. Zig Ziglar Nothing is as sacred as the integrity of your own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often ve ry tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppres sion. H. L. Mencken Generous people are rarely mentally ill. Karl Menninger Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. P. J. O Rourke This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the pow er to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy . Susan Polis Schutz A quiet mind is more important than a positive mind. Deepak Chopra I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex. Katharine Hepburn A novel is a narrative of a certain length with something wrong with it. Randall Jarrell Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. Viktor E. Frankl When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Tom Robbins Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain. Hugh Prather To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one. Unknown The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind. John Gregory Dunne Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. It is comprehensible when I write: The man sat on the grass, because it is clear and does not detain one s atte ntion. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully. The brain can t grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously. Anton Chekhov There s hardly anywhere in literature where you don t find a triangle. Leonard Michaels Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks. Richard Curtis Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life. Benjamin Disraeli I hate women because they always know where things are. Voltaire Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. Alexander Pope Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you ve got to say, and say it hot. D. H. Lawrence I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, To hell with you. Saul Bellow Being born is like being kidnapped and then sold into slavery. William Shakespeare Whether they find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy p lanet. Jack Handy Oaths are but words, and words are but wind. Samuel Butler Language is fossil poetry. Ralph Waldo Emerson There is no mystery about art. Do the things that you can see, they will show yo u those that you cannot see. By doing what you can you will gradually get to kno w what it is that you want to do and cannot do, and so be able to do it. Samuel Butler Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan John Fowles that is the rule. The only reason I didn t kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn t decide which one to jump in to. Wilfrid Sheed Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly. Alexander Pope All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action. Demosthenes Generally speaking, the Way of the Warrior is resolute acceptance of death. Miyamoto Musashi Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before. Mae West Our knowledge is a tiny island in a great ocean of nonknowledge. Isaac Bashevis Singer I m an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house. Zsa Zsa Gabor May you live all the days of your life. Jonathan Swift None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. Henry David Thoreau The man who makes no mistakes usually does not make anything. Edward John Phelps The words that love inspires outlive their utterance. Horace Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea. Dostoevsky A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitud e with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Mahatma Gandhi When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy. Seneca He wrapped himself in quotations as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors. Rudyard Kipling Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there w ould be no life. John Updike I have always said and felt that true enjoyment cannot be described. Jean Jacques Rousseau When you go to the dark place you must come back singing. Deena Metzger Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. Paula Brett Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it. René Magritte You must do the very thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Henry David Thoreau If it s never our fault, we can t take responsibility for it. If we can t take respons ibility for it, we ll always be its victim. Richard Bach Traditional words are just babbling in that presence, and babbling is a substitu te for sight. Rumi In the long years liker they must grow; the man be more of woman, she of man. Alfred Lord Tennyson You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don t try. Beverly Sills Art has an obligation to offend. Edward Albee We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. Anaïs Nin Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it ne cessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Abraham Lincoln Don t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what y ou have to say. It s the one and only thing you have to offer. Barbara Kingsolver Get black on white. Guy de Maupassant When writing a novel, that s pretty much entirely what life turns into: House burne d down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pr etty good day. Neil Gaiman Who am I? What will I be? Why am I here? Where am I going? Constantin Stanislavski There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right. Rudyard Kipling Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters. John L Heureux Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath. Michael Caine I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child. George Konrád Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. William Blake Attention is Key. Pay attention to anything long enough or correctly the first t ime, and you will understand. Dr. Suderland Vildenstroff Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. Friedrich Nietzsche All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very will ing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal. Flannery O Connor Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. William James People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likel y to when your words are pursuing them. Edwin H. Friedman It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man i s never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the sam e even for half an hour. G. I. Gurdjieff Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them . Rabindranath Tagore Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Voltaire Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the clos est our country has ever been to being even. Will Rogers Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And i t has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. Paul Tillich There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot. L. Sprague de Camp To know one thing, you must know the opposite. Henry Moore I m afraid of coaching, of writer s classes, of writer s magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think abo ut it, and was never able to walk another step. Robert A. Heinlein Fuck the plot. Edna O Brien Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money from this state of being. A. A. Milne What we think, we become. Buddha I don t have a moral plan. I m a Canadian. David Cronenberg I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibi lity on the west coast. Viktor E. Frankl In the most basic sense, the purpose of life is being Seth as opposed to not being. Facts are many, but the truth is one. Rabindranath Tagore Culture makes all men gentle. Menander The air around us is charged with the storyteller s presence. We are inside a magi c circle, and no harm can befall us until the tale is done. Victor Perera The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing. Marc Chagall Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. Mae West Behind or within our cultures are individual lives. And behind or within them ar e stories. Behind these stories are archetypal tales. Behind these tales are str ange forces that combine and recombine to reveal and create the world. Deena Metzger If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious d esign of doing me good, I should run for my life. Henry David Thoreau Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is par amount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other. Carl Jung Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. Aldous Huxley Work is a four-letter word; art and fun have but three. Hap Hagood This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. Oscar Wilde The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do i t if you felt that it didn t matter. Edward Albee The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of h is own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth. W. B. Yeats Cthulhu still lives, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more; but his mini sters on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. H. P. Lovecraft Let the odour of the eye of Horus adhere to thee. The Pyramid Inscriptions This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you. Hafiz of Persia I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. Henry David Thoreau I should like one of these days to be so well known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would permit me to break wind in society, and society would t hink it a most natural thing. Honoré de Balzac Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America. James Joyce You can make a better living in this world as a soothsayer than as a truth-sayer . Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. Kahlil Gibran Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. James M. Barrie The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed. Nicholas-Sébastien Chamfort Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil. Friedrich Nietzsche I cringe when critics say I m a master of the popular novel. What s an unpopular nov el? Irwin Shaw Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning. Stanley Kunitz Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false? Simone Weil Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground set you free from probability. Robertson Davies not a flying carpet to I ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of makin g other chances. Anne Tyler Every secret of a writer s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of hi s mind is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf Eighty percent of success is showing up. Woody Allen One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family. Pat Conroy I want to make your flesh creep. Charles Dickens If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. Willa Cather To regret deeply is to live afresh. Henry David Thoreau If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet you could shoot beer out your nose. Jack Handy Except for the young or very happy, I can t say I am sorry for anyone who dies. William Makepeace Thackeray Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here? Whence, whence this manifold creat ion sprang? The Gods themselves came later into being Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? H. P. Blavatsky Live or die but don t poison everything. Saul Bellow Summertime And the livin is easy, Fish are jumpin And the cotton is high. Oh yo daddy s rich An yo ma is good lookin So hush, little baby, Don t you cry. One of these mornin s, You s gonna rise up singin Then you ll spread yo wings An you ll take to the sky. But till that mornin , There s ain t nothin can harm you With your Daddy an Mummy Standin by. Cole Porter A man is a poor creature compared to a woman. Honoré de Balzac A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life. Robertson Davies The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. G. K. Chesterton In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he s about 75. Irwin Shaw Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. Rabindranath Tagore Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to rea d your diary except your mother. Richard Peck There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. Camille Paglia I feel it now: there s a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world. I know t hat nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. Rainer Maria Rilke I felt early on I wasn t going to be a respectable citizen. Cormac McCarthy When we read, we start at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. Whe n we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out. Vickie Karp The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder wh ether you are happy or not. George Bernard Shaw Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions or the reverse. Aristotle what we do that we are happy Never be sincere Gordon Lish sincerity is the death of writing. Express yourself in a plain, easy manner, in well-chosen, significant, and decen t terms, and give an harmonious and pleasing turn to your periods. Cervantes Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. Friedrich Nietzsche My crown is in my heart, not on my head. William Shakespeare Suffering avoided leads to emptiness. Oswald Spengler Man s conscience is the oracle of God. Lord Byron So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. Benjamin Franklin A broad margin