Sunday, August 15, 2010

Some Writing On Writing

For your enjoyment and maybe as a stimulant to thought - some quotes on writing.


Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Flannery O'Connor

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Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Oliver Herford

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People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Television has raised writing to a new low.


Samuel Goldwyn

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Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.


W. Somerset Maugham

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With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.


James Thurber

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The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Mark Twain

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A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Ring Lardner

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It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

Andrew Jackson

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A dramatist is a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom.

Kenneth Tynan

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A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Cole Porter

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The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns.

Herman Wouk

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It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.

Erle Stanley Gardner

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And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won't have to bother doing it themselves.

Beth Henley

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The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.

Agatha Christie

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The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

Agatha Christie

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The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result.

-Bernard Levin

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I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter De Vries

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Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.

Josh Billings

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