Some Words of Wisdom For Those About To Write...

Excerpts from Laurie Porter's book,
The Writer's Quotation Book: A Literary Companion.
edited by James Charlton. Yonkers, N. Y.:Pushcart Press, 1980.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence, 
or whose attitude is patronizing    E.B. White

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing
that's read by persons who move their lips 
when they're reading to themselves.
Don Maquis

Just get it down on paper and then we'll see 
what to do with it.    Maxwell Perkins

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing 
the dishes.     Agatha Christie
Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person,as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.
Pablo Picasso

I wrote...by using the same apprehensive imagination that occurs
in the morning before an afternoon's appointment with my dentist.
    John Marquand

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give
young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers 
talk about writing or themselves.
    Lilian Hellman

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part 
that is good is not original, and the part that is original
is not good.
    Samuel Johnson

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened
and the story of what appeared to happen.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
It's silly to suggest the writing of poetry as something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you work hard at.
Louise Bogan

It is as hard to find a neutral critic as it is a neutral country 
in time of war.
Katherine Anne Porter

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter
someone else's draft.
H. G. Wells
 

Everyone needs an editor.    Tim Foot
commenting in Time magazine on the fact that Hitler's original title for Mein Kampf was Four-and-a- Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.
 


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