“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
Stephen King (1947) American author
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.”
[Saussy, Haun, Lee, Pauline, Handler-Spitz, Rivi, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings, 2016, Columbia University Press, 0231541538, https://books.google.com/books?id=4Xm0CwAAQBAJ, Prefaces, 4–5]
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Li Zhi (philosopher)2
Chinese philosopher 1527–1602Related quotes
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Preface; Variant translations:
It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them... A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.
The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint
Homily during the Holy Mass at the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C., on 7 October 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to the United States <br class="br">Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19791007_usa-washington_en.html
Osthanes (-500) pen-name used by several pseudo-anonymous authors of Greek and Latin works of alchemy
Francis Preston Venable, A Short History of Chemistry (1894) p. 6. https://books.google.com/books?id=fN9YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA6
“A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
Se me abre una puerta, entro y me hallo con cien puertas cerradas.
Voces (1943)
“Lonely people keep up a ceaseless flow of commentary on themselves.”
Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic
City Aphorisms (1984)
“I thank God for Closed Doors”
Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter
