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 …
Tag: quote
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 …
Jul 01
Quote of the week: June roundup
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabokov A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute. Terence …
Jun 09
Quote of the week: May roundup
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it. Lloyd Alexander The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. Thomas Jefferson Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food. Douglas Adams What gunpowder did for war, the printing …