“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

April 6, 1775
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

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Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

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“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 6, 1775
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

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“For seven blissful years I had spent my time reading, writing and researching a book about introversion. But the publication date had arrived, the idyll was over and my metamorphosis was complete. I was now that impossibly oxymoronic creature: the Public Introvert.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Essay: "An Introvert Steps Out," "Sunday Book Review" section of The New York Times, online April 27, 2012 and in print April 29, 2012.

“Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"Introduction" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/1.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
Context: Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for. An autobiography is specially in need of justification to its author. It is a work of self-justification which itself needs justifying. Why have I written this book? Why have I written it the way I have? What does it mean to me? What do I hope it will mean to others?
Each human being has at the final core of self a crystal from which the whole manifold of the personality develops, a secret molecular lattice which governs the unfolding of all the structures of the individuality, in time, in space, in memory, in action and contemplation. Asleep there were just these dreams and no others. Awake there were these actions only. Only these deeds came into being.

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