Source: We the Living
“i still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line…”
In a letter to her husband Otto Modersohn, from Berlin, 4 February 1901; as quoted in Voicing our visions, -Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 201
1900 - 1905
“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
“You come into this world a zero, and you leave a zero.”
Jason Arnopp, Slipknot: Inside the Sickness, Behind the Masks (2001), ISBN 0091879337
“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
Misattributed
Variant: If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Source: Epigraph, in Fahrenheit 451 a translation of a statement by Juan Ramón Jiménez
“You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing. I’ve always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That’s our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can’t say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” What nonsense! I’m given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.
I’ve always loved the idea of the craftsman, the anonymous man. For instance, I’ve always wanted my books to be called the work of Anon, because Anon is my favorite literary character. If you look through an anthology of poems that go from the far past into the present time, you’ll see that all the poems signed “Anon” have a very specific flavor that is one flavor all the way through the centuries. I think, perhaps arrogantly, of myself as “Anon.” I would like to think that Mary Poppins and the other books could be called back to make that change. But I suppose it’s too late for that.
