James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright
Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews
Building the Mote in God’s Eye (with Jerry Pournelle) (p. 442)
Short fiction, N-Space (1990)
James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright
Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews
William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer
Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Source: I. Asimov
“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
“A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
“Writers are as jealous as pigeons.”
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician
Letter to I.L. Leontev (February 4, 1888)
Letters
“All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer
As quoted in "Dailer's Choice" by Harriet Van Horne, in New York Magazine Vol. 10, No. 13 (28 March 1977), p. 80
General sources
Joe Trohman (1984) American musician
My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)
Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science
As quoted in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (1984)
Context: Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.