Quotation Quarters
EMMETT'S LAW: The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy
than doing the task itself. --- Rita Emmett, The Procrastinator’s
Handbook
Writing is easy, you just stare at the paper until little drops of blood
appear on your forehead. --- Ring Lardner, Jr.
A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more than a good
drunk is automatically a good bartender. ---Jim Bishop
Many years ago, when I was just about as complete a failure as one can
become, I began to spend a good deal of time in libraries, looking for
some answers….I found all the answers I needed in that golden vein of
ore that every library has. --- Og Mandino
A manuscript not submitted is a book not published. ---Dan Poynter
I have heard a thousand masterpieces talked out over bars, restaurant
tables and loveseats. I have never seen one of them in print. Books must
be written, not talked. --- Morris L. West
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining … researching … talking to
people about what you’re going to write, none of that is writing.
Writing is writing.
--- E. L. Doctorow
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. --- Richard Back
Find something only you can write. --- James Dickey
When I am writing I am doing the thing I was meant to do. --- Anne
Sexton
I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted,
when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card; when nothing has
seemed worth enduring for another five minutes … and somehow the
activity of writing changes everything. --- Joyce Carol Oates
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that
doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no
man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright. ---
E.B.White
It is safe to assume that every writer has read every word of every
review, and will never forgive you. --- John Leonard
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write
things worth reading or do things worth writing. --- Benjamin Franklin
To write well, you must be able to think well. And therein lies the
problem . . .
--- Alan Weiss
A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they
can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors
and odors like butter in a refrigerator. --- John Steinbeck
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.
--- Robert Graves
By writing, you learn to write. --- Samuel Johnson
Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewriting in
process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. --- John
Steinback
If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be
writers.
--- Irvin S. Cobb
A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle
to peer out. --- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed
is to always try just one more time. --- Thomas Edison
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an
amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it
becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be
reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the
public. --- Winston Churchill
EMMETT'S SECOND LAW: Perfection is the downfall of procrastinators.
Strive for Excellence – it’s achievable; perfection seldom is.
--- Rita Emmett, The Procrastinator’s Handbook
I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine
o’clock every morning. --- Peter De Vries
A self-published book is like a home cooked meal. The creator thinks its
nirvana, but no one is mistaking you for a restaurant. --- Alan Weiss
Write what you love and love what you write. --- Dan Poynter
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is
really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and
lightning.
--- Mark Twain
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the
bones.
--- The Bible: Proverbs 16:24
In books, it is the chief of all perfections to be plain and brief. ---
Samuel Butler
There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so
much from critics and publishers in this one. --- Christian N. Bovée
Write a thousand words a day. That’s only about four pages, but force
yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That’s
what writing’s all about. --- Ray Bradbury
Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer.
But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity,
and destroy most of it. --- Colette
I make it a rule not to clutter my mind with simple information that I
can find in a book in five minutes. --- Albert Einstein
What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the knowledge
that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only
long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? --- Oliver Wendell
Holmes
When you begin a paragraph and, before you know it, you’ve finished an
article or a chapter, you’ve met a writer. --- Alan Weiss
Authors in general are stark mad on the subject of their own works. ---
A.R. Lesage
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
--- Logan Pearsall Smith
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things
familiar, and familiar things new. --- William Makepeace Thackeray
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the
way, a counsellor, a multitude of counsellors. --- Henry Ward Beecher
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read”.
--- Hilaire Belloc
Among the many inventions of man, the book, without a doubt, is the most
astounding … Only the book is an extension of our imagination and
memory.
--- Jorge Luis Borges
My books are my tools, and the greater their variety and perfection, the
greater the help to my literary work. --- Tryon Edwards
Women are by nature fickle, and so are men … Not so with books, for
books cannot change. A thousand years hence they are what you find them
today, speaking the same words, holding forth the same comfort. ---
Eugene Field
It is a mistake to think that books have come to stay. The human race
did without them for thousands of years and may decide to do without
them again.
--- E.M. Forster
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in
my library are books that other folks have lent me. --- Anatole France
The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of
the wisdom will get in anyhow. --- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Books are the one element in which I am personally and nakedly
acquisitive. If it weren’t for the law I would steal them. If it weren’t
for my purse I would buy them.
--- Harold Laski
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. --- E.P. Whipple
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good
are not original, and the parts that are original are not good. ---
Samuel Johnson
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it. --- Groucho Marx
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
lamppost what it feels about dogs. --- John Osborne
This is not a novel to be tossed lightly aside. It should be thrown with
great force.
--- Dorothy Parker
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in
front of me. Soon it will be behind me. --- Max Reger
An editor should tell the author his writing is a little better than it
is. Not a lot better, a little better. --- T.S. Eliot
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
--- Oliver Herford
For several days after my first book was published I carried it about in
my pocket, and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had
not faded.
--- James M. Barrie
Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell
for them somewhere. --- Johann von Goethe
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants
down.
--- Edna St. Vincent Millay
It is not wise to solicit the opinions of publishers – they become proud
if you do.
--- Gore Vidal
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them
together.
--- Josh Billings
Avoid a strange and unfamiliar word as you would a dangerous reef.
--- Julius Caesar
The constant use of long, involved words proves two things: 1) that
you're learned, and 2) that you're ignorant of how best to communicate
with people.
--- Will Conway
To speak of ‘mere words’ is much like speaking of ‘mere dynamite’.
--- C.J. Ducasse
When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most
idiomatic. Avoid big words as you would rouge, and love simple ones as
you would native roses in your cheek. --- August W. Hare
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a
dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one
who knows how to combine them. --- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Words are such a playground! --- Maureen Herring
Writers should make effective use of their most valuable asset: their
time.
--- Dan Poynter
The most valuable talent is that of never using two words when one will
do.
--- Thomas Jefferson
Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. --- Samuel
Johnson
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
--- Rudyard Kipling
Modern English is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which
can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. ---
George Orwell
Words are … the most powerful narcotic, the most potent stimulant, the
most remarkable hallucinogen ever devised. Words teach, they sing, they
hurt, they sanctify. They also degrade, inflame, mislead and—lie … Words
also infect people with a rage to parrot. Every new vogue in verbiage
becomes a stampede. --- Leo Rosten
Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are
condensed, the deeper they burn. --- Robert Southey
Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a
shoemaker.
--- Evelyn Waugh
Words are an albatross to a writer – heavy, hopeless, fateful things.
One writes to make words mean something new. --- Joy Williams
I never said writing your book would be easy. I only promised it would
be worth it. --- Dan Poynter
What’s in a word? Consider the difference between ‘wise man’ and ‘wise
guy’.
---- Anonymous
I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write
out of them.
--- John Ashberry
At this time, I had decided the only thing I was fit for was to be a
writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never
be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any. --- Russell
Baker
It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.
Those who do not do this remain amateurs. --- Gerald Brenan
You must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with
and go on that basis. he’s not a great mind, he’s not a great thinker,
he’s not a great philosopher, he’s a storyteller. --- Erskine Caldwell
There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching.
It's a kind of trick of the mind and he is born with it. --- Morley
Callaghan
I am convinced that all writers are optimists whether they concede the
point or not . . . How otherwise could any human being sit down to a
pile of blank sheets and decide to write, say two hundred thousand words
on a given theme?
---Thomas B. Costain
In America only the successful writer is important, in France all
writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia
you have to explain what a writer is. --- Geoffrey Cotterell
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is
also his most difficult task. --- Robertson Davies
The way I see it, every one of us in the writing business starts off
with precisely the same tools, the 26 letters of the alphabet. All we
can do is try to arrange those 26 letters in a different way than anyone
else has before. --- Bob Greene
They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young
writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers. --- Lillian Hellman
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
--- Ernest Hemingway
Books are ships which pass through the vast seas of time. --- Francis
Bacon
All words are pegs to hang ideas on. --- Henry Ward Beecher
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the
true writer always plays to an audience of one. --- E.B. White
Money to a writer is time to write. --- Frank Herbert
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped,
self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in.
That is too much of a temptation to the editor. --- Ring Lardner
A book is a friend; a good book is a good friend. It will talk to you
when you want it to talk, and it will keep still when you want it to
keep still--and there are not many who know enough to do that. A library
is a collection of friends.
----Lyman Abbott
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are
delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the
posterity of those who are yet unborn. --- Joseph Addison
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested. --- Francis Bacon
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? --- Henry Ward
Beecher
The publisher is a middleman, he calls the tune to which the whole of
the rest of the trade dances; and he does so because he pays the piper.
---- Geoffrey Faber
The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to
starve anywhere. --- S.J. Perelman
The wastebasket is a writer's best friend. --- Isaac Bashevis Singer
The poor writers we have always with us--if we take the daily paper.
--- Elbert Hubbard
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best
of all.
--- Winston Churchill
The difference between prose and poetry is that prose is written all the
way across the page, and poetry is written only half way across.
--- Laura Glover
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if
you earn no money. ---Jules Renard
Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. --- Samuel
Johnson
Words are vehicles that can transport us from the drab sands to the
dazzling stars. --- M. Robert Syme
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. ---John
Steinbeck
When my parents taught me not to write in books, they did not know they
were raising an author who would autograph them. --- Dan Poynter
It is difficult to tell how much men’s minds are conciliated by a kind
manner and gentle speech. --- Cicero
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
--- Denis Diderot
Gentle words, quiet words, are, after all, the most powerful words. They
are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing. --- Washington
Gladden
Every writer must acknowledge, and be able to handle the unalterable
fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary
confinement. --- Peter Straub
Some reviews give pain. That is regrettable, but no author has the right
to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and
he must take the publicity that comes along. --- E.M. Forster
The beginning writer needs talent, application and aspirin. If he wants
to write just to make money, he is not a writer. --- James Thurber
I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool
around with it any longer. --- William Gass
Most editors generally can't recognize bad writing when they read it.
Nor do they try very hard to learn to recognize it. --- Alfred Knopf
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. --- Jorge Luis Borges
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But
better far to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
--- Katherine Mansfield
If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's
read by people who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.
--- Don Marquis
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
You do not really believe Lee Iacocca wrote those two bestsellers all by
himself do you? Lee Iacocca is the author but he is not the writer. Most
celebrities do not have time to write books. --- Dan Poynter
Every writer, by the way he uses the language, reveals something of his
spirit, his habits, his capacities, his bias….Avoid the elaborate, the
pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar
word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. ---- William
Strunk, Jr./E.B. White
Most writers are in a state of gloom a good deal of the time; they need
perpetual reassurance. --- John Hall Wheelock
It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to
say.
--- Sholem Asch
He that will write well in any tongue must follow this counsel of
Aristotle: to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do.
--- Roger Ascham
Writing is an apprenticeship that leads to soul, to Self. It involves
digging deeply into territory which we keep hidden, not only from
others, but even more dangerously from ourselves. --- Catherine Bauer
All our words will be useless unless they come from within – words which
do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness. --- Mother Teresa
Treat it as a job – not a mystical calling. Then you’ll get up every
morning and go “to work,” instead of waiting for the muse to attend you.
--- Jean Brody
An author departs; he does not die. --- Dinah Maria Mulock
A blessed companion is a book – a book that fitly chosen is a lifelong
friend.
---- Dougles Jerrold
A house without books is like a home without windows. --- Horace Mann
Nature fits all her children with something to do;
He who would write but can’t write, can surely review.
--- James Russell Lowell
Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out of
yourself; in reviewing you take it out of other people. --- George
Bernard Shaw
No possession can surpass or even equal a good library. --- J.A.
Lankford
While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst
performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best. --- Samuel
Johnson
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope
that we'll be funnier to look at than to read. --- Sinclair Lewis
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function
achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. --- H. L. Mencken
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of
some painful illness. --- George Orwell
Words form the threads on which we string our experiences.
----Aldous Huxley
Oh, words are action enough, if they're the right words. --- D.H.
Lawrence
Apt words have power to assuage the tumors of a troubled mind.
--- John Milton
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than
the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his
habitually slack attention. --- Ezra Pound
Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired
all at once. --- Jean Jacques Rousseau
You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. An
absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary
as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the
punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts on
himself. --- Irwin Shaw
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little
house. --- William Shenstone
Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness.
--- Georges Simenon
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. --- Mark Twain
Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have
drive to lay an egg. --- John Updike
Unless he has a genuine sympathy with the author's problems, no one can
hope to make an enduring success of publishing. --- Michael Joseph
If you force yourself to think clearly you will write clearly. It's as
simple as that. The hard part isn't the writing; the hard part is the
thinking. --- William Zinsser
It's not a college degree that makes a writer. The great thing is to
have a story to tell. --- Polly Adler
The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what
his subject has to tell him. --- Rachel Carson
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the
age of fifteen. --- Willa Cather
Writers become idiotic under flattery sooner than any other set of
people in the world. --- Frank Moore Colby
It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.
--- William Faulkner
There is no denying the fact that writers should be read but not seen.
Rarely are they a winsome sight. --- Edna Ferber
Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at
things.
--- Elizabeth Janeway
Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He
must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain
and complete an undertaking. --- Lawrence Clark Powell
Write on a subject you love. Your profit center should also be your
passion center. --- Dan Poynter
When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and
ink and glue--you sell him a whole new life. --- Christopher Morley
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but
couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. --- Robert
Benchley
The person who never makes a mistake probably isn’t doing anything.
--- Rita Emmett, The Procrastinator’s Handbook
Back to the Writer's Room
