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I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. - Robert Benchley Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. - Gene Fowler I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book. - John Lennon We're all made of stories. ... When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything. - Charles de Lint, Memory & Dream The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. - Richard Bach, Illusions Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true. - Ruth Bader Ginsburg I couldn't care less about all those fiction stories about what happened in the year 1500 or 1600. Half of them aren't even true. - John Daly, explaining why he doesn't like literature No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence: - Mike Nichols, columnist Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. - Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. - Oxford University Press, Edpress News Illiterate? Write today for free help. - from advertisement I know everything. One has to, to write decently. - Henry James Here's a weird thought: What if everyone only has so many words inside of them? Then sooner or later you'd run out of words, wouldn't you? And you'd never know when it was going to happen because everybody would have a different allotment, it would be different for everyone -- the way hair colour varies, or fingerprints. I could be in the middle of a story, and then run out of words, and it'd never be finished. I could be using up the words I need for that story writing this. - Charles de Lint, Memory & Dream The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. - Charlotte Bronte A pencil, sharpened with a rapier wit, can slay dragons and bring down castle walls. (Don't break the point.) - anonymous I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. - Ralph Waldo Emerson There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. - Maya Angelou There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - William Somerset Maugham The computer may make it easier for someone to write but they don't make the writing any better. - Andy Rooney I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing. - Octavia Butler There's stories and then there's stories. The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you've heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on, and the giving only makes you feel better. The others are just words on a page. - Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers. - Frank Harris The best book is a collaboration between author and reader. - Barbara Tuchman Beneath the favorite tale of the moment a deeper story always lies waiting to be told. - Thomas Moore A good book reflects the reader, as much as it illuminates the author's text. - Charles de Lint, The Little Country I don't think I'll ever have enough time to tell all the stories I need to tell. - Charles de Lint, Memory & Dream A room without books is like a body without a soul. - Cicero When I have money, I buy books. If any money is left over, I buy food and clothes. - Erasmus A collection of books is the best of all universities. - Thomas Carlysle 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 have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Why do an infinite number of monkeys always type Hamlet? What's wrong with Macbeth? Why not something by Dickens or Poe? - Tom Knapp I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon. - Bill Hirst The lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story. - Charles de Lint, Memory & Dream Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. - Jessamyn West Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. - Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. - Gilbert K. Chesterton This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force. - Dorothy Parker 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 You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. - Ray Bradbury There are strict laws against assaulting people just because we don't like something they wrote. - Dave Barry Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happen to be handy and easily adaptable. - Robert Benchley If I've learned one thing, it is: Never try to write a bestseller. Instead, tell the story that you want to tell. - Chet Williamson I knew a poet once. He wanted to capture his soul on a piece of paper -- really capture it. But of course, you can't do that, can you? You can try, you can bleed honesty into your art until it feels like you've wrung your soul dry, but in the end, all you've created is a possible link between minds. An attempt at communication. If a soul can't be measured, then how can it be captured? - Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot Write as if you are dying. - Annie Dillard Wear the old coat and buy the new book. - Austin Phelps Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. - P.J. O'Rourke There are books ... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. - T.S. Eliot  Journalism
I was just an observer going through life, never a participant, which might be the reason I became a journalist. The Spoken Word
Before I begin speaking, there is something I would like to say. |