The only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read. Tom Clancy, 1947-2013 One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment. Hart Crane, 1899-1932 Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, …
Category: Quotes
Apr 05
Quote of the week: March roundup
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. Albert Einstein But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in …
Feb 28
Quote of the week: February roundup
The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest. Horace Greeley, 1811-1872 It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents. William Osler, 1849-1919 Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. W. H. Auden, 1907-1973 Success …
Feb 02
Quote of the week: January roundup
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877 Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present. Edmond de Goncourt, 1822-1896 A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story. Isaac Babel, 1894-1940 Writing the …
Dec 30
Quote of the week: December roundup
At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me. David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day Man’s brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious …
Nov 30
Quote of the week: November roundup
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index …
Nov 10
Quote of the week: October roundup
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book. Marcel Proust You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen. Paul Simon I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as …
Oct 15
Quote of the week: September roundup
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. G.K. Chesterton The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. John Steinbeck There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a …
Sep 03
Quote of the week: August roundup
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. John Steinbeck There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. Gilbert K. Chesterton A book is a version of the world. If …
Aug 04
Quote of the week: July roundup
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. Robert Frost No two persons ever read the same book. Edmund Wilson There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an …