“Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Context: Write me at the Hotel Quintana, Pamplona, Spain. Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something

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Ernest Hemingway 501

American author and journalist 1899–1961

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“Write me at the Hotel Quintana, Pamplona, Spain. Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

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“Every now and then it's nice to stop and just look over what you've been writing and the way you've been writing it and sort of reassess it, and see if you've fallen into bad habits or there's something you'd like to get better at. One way of reexamining your own work is to work with somebody else. It's a learning experience. I don't want to get into a rut.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

As quoted in "Forever Amber" (October 1991) http://web.archive.org/web/20080212112534/http://zelazny.corrupt.net/amberever.html

“Mark: Um. I don't know Hayley. I don't know. Because I admire the fact that you keep challenging yourself. You know, last week was an enormous challenge for you and you keep doing that and I don't want to discourage that because it's a fantastic thing about you. But honestly, I just really don't think that you totally connected with that at the level that Anastacia actually bought the meaning of that song and what it meant to her. I didn't feel it from you. It didn't connect for me like some of the others that you've done have.”

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“He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.”

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“[…] it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.”

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Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 92 (26-2-32)

“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.”

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Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Sometimes if you go to see a very, very, happy movie, a Hollywood movie, you can walk out of the movie and feel very depressed because it's so false. And other times you see a very depressing movie and it makes you feel good, happy because you've seen something real. You've seen something that talks to you and says that your bad feelings are legitimate. And then you can go further with that and say, "Well, this bad feeling is good, and this good feeling is bad, but is it good to feel bad and is it bad to feel good?" I'm concerned with feelings. And sometimes when I feel good, I'll write something very negative because I have the strength to do it. But when I really, really feel very bad, what I want to do is make myself feel better, so I'll write something happier.”

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Quotes from interviews

“If you want something you've never had you have to be willing to do something you've never done.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 97

“Now I've got this moniker that I'm the foot-in-mouth gal, and I keep thinking, In what way? Because I said something you don't agree with? Because I said something you don't like? I'm just telling you my opinion. I hate the idea that I can't be honest about how I feel about things because it's going to piss somebody off who feels differently. That seems preposterous to me.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

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