Quotes about writing
page 16

“The council that will write the constitution should be elected, not hand-picked … The constitution will be illegal if it is written by a council, whether that is chosen by the Americans or by what is called the Governing Council or by anyone else.”

Ali Sistani (1930) Iranian-Iraqi Muslim scholar

New Iraqi constitution

“What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Interview with Donald Hall in November 1960, pub.'Paris Review' The Art of Poetry, no 26 (1961)

“The longer he practised his craft, the more conscious he became of the dynamic of language, of speech and writing as events in themselves. The simplest and most obvious proposition, stated in the most elementary language, could so mutate itself in the mind of the reader that it could express the opposite of what the writer had intended. What he wrote as evidence for the defence could hang the man he was defending.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Reflection of Nicol Peters, journalist, in Ch. III
Lazarus (1990)

“A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

Reading

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

“My main inspiration is sardonic British TV critics like Charlie Brooker, whose excellent show Screenwipe is fully on Youtube, and I recommend everyone watch it. He used to write for a PC magazine I read fanatically as a child. My own style is a mixture of him, possibly Douglas Adams, and internet writers like Seanbaby, Old Man Murray, or Something Awful. I’m such a rip-off.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.geek.com/interview-zero-punctuations-yahtzee/
Other Articles

Reading

“If the study of history is the study of language in one form or another, and if we really fabricate our past, not merely—weakly—live it; then we can begin to see how the world was Greek once, or was Roman, since every page of consciousness was written in these tongues then. All the central documents—laws, plays, poems, reports, abiding wisdoms, letters, scientific learning, news—were couched in Greek or Latin phrases, and the chief historians consulted them, composed their chronicles from the same speech, in the same words. Don't you see that when a man writes the history of your country in another mother-language, he is bent on conquest?”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 271

Wisdom, World, Law, History

“Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Dead

“The Governing Senate... has deemed it necessary to make known… that the landlords' serfs and peasants... owe their landlords proper submission and absolute obedience in all matters, according to the laws that have been enacted from time immemorial by the autocratic forefathers of Her Imperial Majesty and which have not been repealed, and which provide that all persons who dare to incite serfs and peasants to disobey their landlords shall be arrested and taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished forthwith as disturbers of the public tranquillity, according to the laws and without leniency. And should it so happen that even after the publication of the present decree of Her Imperial Majesty any serfs and peasants should cease to give the proper obedience to their landlords... and should make bold to submit unlawful petitions complaining of their landlords, and especially to petition Her Imperial Majesty personally, then both those who make the complaints and those who write up the petitions shall be punished by the knout and forthwith deported to Nerchinsk to penal servitude for life and shall be counted as part of the quota of recruits which their landlords must furnish to the army. And in order that people everywhere may know of the present decree, it shall be read in all the churches on Sundays and holy days for one month after it is received and therafter once every year during the great church festivals, lest anyone pretend ignorance.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Decree on Serfs (1767) as quoted in A Source Book for Russian History Vol. 2 (1972) by George Vernadsky

Life, People, Law, Time

“In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious. … The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person's skin had burned off.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 1: Bloodlines

Age, Sense, Time, Personality

“Writing certainly develops as an elite initiative at this [ancient] time. It helps them to harness the workforce – it's a way of communicating with the gods; and it's a way for the elites to list what you have, and what they have.”

Richard Miles (historian) (1969) British historian and archaeologist

My bright idea: Civilisation is still worth striving for

God, Way, Communication, Time

“As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words — two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas — a series of ideas stuck together.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1962)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Idea, Time

“In Australia during WWII, a couple of established poets invented the supposedly nonsensical works of a fictitious poet called Ern Malley and used them to discredit the modernist pretensions of the young editor who printed them. It never occurred to them that as writers of talent they were not in a position to suppose that they could deliberately write something perfectly meaningless.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Congratulations!', on scams, frauds and hoaxes.
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

“He (Donald Trump) was speaking specifically to the reports that the father (Khizr M. Khan), who is a strong proponent of Sharia Law. And actually writing about it and how the Constitution should be subordinate to Sharia Law.”

Katrina Pierson (1976) Political spokesperson

About the statements of Donald Trump on the fallen Captain Humayun S. M. Khan's family. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/trump-katrina-pierson-khan-obama-clinton/ (August 3, 2016)

Law, Strong

“Writing is easy. It's just the typing that's hard.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Miles Sparks, Prologue, p. 3
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

“Woody Allen later wrote in a letter: "My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel, he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book. In the midst of the conversation, as I’m now trying to recall, I did say that 80 percent of success is showing up."”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

1989 August 13, New York Times, On Language: The Elysian Fields by William Safire.
Attributed

People, Books, Way, Time

“To write and speak correctly is certainly necessary; but it is not sufficient. A derivation correctly presented in the book or on the blackboard may be inaccessible and uninstructive, if the purpose of the successive steps is incomprehensible, if the reader or listener cannot understand how it was humanly possible to find such an argument….”

George Pólya book How to Solve It

Source: How to Solve It (1945), p. 207

Books, Understanding, Success

“When I behold the scientific and so-called philosophers full of selfish feelings, and of a tenency to war against circumstances and Providence, I say to myself: They are not true priests, they are but half prophets — it not absolutely false ones. They have read the great page simply with the physical eye, and with none of the spirit within. The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole… That God is one, and that all the works and the feelings He has called into existence are ONE; this is a truth (a biblical and scriptural truth too) not in my opinion developed to the apprehension of most people in its really deep and unfanthomable meaning. There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected. A volume could I write you on this subject.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/158/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 158.

God, War, People, Truth

“I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.
In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field—you can only stand on the shoulders of the other people in your own company.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Why Software Should Be Free (1991) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html 1990s

People, Learning, Science

“We want to stop all immigration from Islamic countries. We want to stimulate voluntary re-emigration to Islamic countries. We want to expel all criminals with dual citizenship and deprive them of their Dutch nationality. We want to de-islamize our nation. Dear Friends, there is a lot of work to do. We, the defenders of freedom and security, have an historic duty. Our generation has been entrusted with a huge task: To oppose Islam and keep the flame of liberty burning. I say it without exaggeration: the future of human civilization depends on us. Now is a time when everyone in the West must do his duty. We are writing history here. So, let us do our duty. Let us stand with a happy heart and a strong spirit. Let us go forth with courage and save freedom!”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/36-fj-related/geert-wilders/7981-geert-wilders-speech-danish-free-press-society-copenhagen-2-11-2014.html at the 10 years memorial conference for Theo Van Gogh arranged by the Danish Free Press Society (Copenhagen, 2 November 2014); Video: Geert Wilders speaks in the Danish Parliament Building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgpzi0PW0w 2010s

Happiness, History, Courage, Freedom

“On the rock stars: Rock stars don’t talk to each other. They’re too important to talk to another one. They’ve all got their own little palace, their own universe, of which they are the head. So how can they possibly go to somebody else’s universe? They can’t handle it. I will one day write the book that shows just how massive some of these egos are. Because I was a slow success, I was meeting people socially whose records I had at home, who were now talking to me on a what-strings-do-you-use level. And very few of them have not disappointed. [Pink Floyd’s] Dave Gilmour is the only one that [hasn’t disappointed]. That paints everyone else as a cunt. Which they are. But Gilmour is fabulous.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

Henry Yates (2015 December 1) " An Interview With The Straight-Talking, No-F**ks-Given Chris Rea http://teamrock.com/feature/2015-12-01/chris-rea-straight-shooter" by TeamRock 2015

People, Books, Disappointment, Home

“In order to write all a man needs is paper and a pencil. Furthermore, when a thing has been written, it is written forever. When it is printed, nothing can stop it from being printed again and again if the thing wants to be printed again and again. I must therefore be a writer.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“Often the boy was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable yearning to write down in books everything he saw, despite what anyone said—two hundred books as thick as the Book of Sermons, whole Bibles, whole chests full of books.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

Books, Boy

“To her Lord, her Father; her Husband, her Brother; his Servant his Child; his Wife, his Sister; and to express all that is humble, respectful and loving to her Abelard, Heloise writes this.”
Domino suo, imo Patri; Conjugi suo, imo Fratri; Ancilla sua, imo Filia; ipsius Uxor, imo Soror; Abaelardo Heloisa, &c. Abel. Op.

Heloise (1101–1164) French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess

Letter II : Heloise to Abelard, Heading
Letters of Abelard and Heloise

Love, Sister

“Mother and father abandoned me at birth and the author of my life also did not write any worth or merit on the page of destiny.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

His confessional statements on his own experiences made in Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 49

Life, Birth

“The public will accept a masterpiece, but it will not accept an attempt to write a masterpiece.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Vain Fortune http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11303/11303.txt, Chapter 1 (1891).

“My first memory of Nirvana was getting a cassette of demos, which ended up becoming Bleach. Everybody's response was that this was an amazing band and these were amazing songs. It was another indication that the Northwest had something special that you couldn't argue with.
It was pretty shocking to see a threepiece that sounded like that, and trying to get inside the head of a guy who writes a song like "Floyd the Barber" – where does the kernel of a song like that start?
The Seattle scene benefitted from an MTV culture, and it was because of the way Nirvana looked and presented themselves that created this kind of unanimous support worldwide. Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
The legend isn't simply going to be the way that he took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Life, Men, Secret, School

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Money, People, Family, Home

“The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet”

Nat Turner (1800–1831) American slave rebellion leader

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)

Learning, Reading, Perfection

“Neither Lynn Margulis nor I have ever proposed a teleological hypothesis. Nowhere in our writing do we express the idea that planetary self-regulation is purposeful, or involves planetary foresight or planning by the biota. …Yet we met persistent, almost dogmatic, criticism that our hypothesis is teleological.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

Healing Gaia (1991)

Idea

“The experience was an exciting one for me. It illustrated that writing was about risk—about risking everything. And that the value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality.”

Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) Polish historian

A 1989 interview with Granta magazine founder Bill Buford. Reprinted in Adbusters Magazine #71.

Reality

“I was… informed, that Baptista Porta, and one or two more, had written somewhat of that Subject, upon this Information I was willing to see whether I might from any of them find any Directions, that might help mee, if I should afterwards have the like Occasion: But I found very little in any of them for my Purpose. Their Businesse being for the most Part, onely to shew how to write in Cipher, (which was not my Work,) and that Things so written were beyond the Skill of Men to decipher. Onely in Baptista Porta (who alone if I mistake not, hath written any Thing to Purpose about deciphering, and was it seemes famous in his Time for his Abilities that Way;) I found that there were some general Directions, such as were obvious from the Nature of the Thing, and which I had before of myself taken Notice of, and made use of so far as the Nature of an intricate Cipher would permit. But the Truth of it is, there are scarce any of his Rules, which the present Way of Cipher (which is now much improved, beyond what, it seemes, it was in his Days) doth not in a Manner wholly elude…”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

Men, Truth, Way, Nature

“Most of the drivers, however, had the sense to stay put, fuming behind their blank windshields as they calculated the cost of repairs and repainting. Practically all of them were armed, but not one was stupid enough to pull a gun. It had been tried during a Trainite demonstration in San Francisco last month. A girl had been shot dead. Others, anonymous in whole-head masks and drab mock-homespun clothing, had dragged the killer from his car and used the same violent acid they applied to glass to write MURDERER on his flesh.
In any case, there was little future in rolling down a window to curse the demonstrators. Throats didn’t last long in the raw air.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “A ROOST FOR CHICKENS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Stupidity, Cars, Girl, Sense

“I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“Monsieur, mon cousin,

I have seen the letters you have sent me by Buckingham herald, whereby I understand that you want my friendship in good form and manner, which contents me well enough; for I have no intention of breaking such truces as have previously been concluded between the late King of most noble memory, my brother, and you for as long as they still have to run. Nevertheless, the merchants of this my kingdom of England, seeing the great provocation your subjects have given them in seizing ships and merchandise and other goods, are fearful of venturing to go to Bordeaux and other places under your rule until they are assured by you that they can surely and safely carry on trade in all the places subject to your sway, according to the rights established by the aforesaid truces. Therefore, in order that my subjects and merchants may not find themselves deceived as a result of this present ambiguous situation, I pray you that by my servant this bearer, one of the grooms of my stable, you will let me know in writing your full intentions, at the same time informing me if there is anything I can do for you in order that I may do it with a good heart. And farewell to you, Monsieur mon cousin.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Letter sent, as King of England, 18 August, 1483, to Louis XI of France. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Friendship, Fear, Understanding, Memory

“I'd love to write another song
Baby especially for you
I'd love to write another song
And feel things bright and new
In poetry I'd carve it well
I'd even make it rhyme
I'd love to write another song
Just to get some peace of mind.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

I'd Love to Write Another Song
Song lyrics, Avalon Sunset (1989)

Love, Peace, Feeling, Baby

“The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The War on Religion
LewRockwell.com
2003-12-30
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html
2000s, 2001-2005

“Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Into the Silence.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Understanding, Silence

“I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on… It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Poul Anderson: Fifty Years of Science Fiction (1997)

Books, Star, Science

“Obama will be very good at that point at pretending to be the commander-in-chief. We have to have a Republican who will be able to look him in the eye and beat him in that debate. You can have lots of people writing talking points for you, and you can have lots of people writing posts on your website, but, out there, it's one on one. And if we're not prepared to win that debate-we're gonna be in trouble.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

"The Man with the Mustache"

People

“There's something about what we're doing, [which] is that we're meant to lose… every time! We make these foires, write these books and perform this music, but the big juggernaut of civilization continues and we've been kind of brushed to the side, but I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead—knowing that society's not going to understand it—and not even caring, because they're having a good time.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Magic Trip, (2011)

Books, Music, History, Understanding

“He had a passion for historical accuracy, saying that it is useless to write when one is not sure of the facts. It will only be adding confusion to an already confused world.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

The Manila Tribune. April 19, 1928.
BALIW

World, Passion

“The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html "The importance of going first" "Seth's Blog" (2012-07-18)

Boy, Personality

“Of course, the test difficulty depends on what you're doing, and on how you're doing it. I'm constantly asking "How much would I have to screw this up to write an incorrect function that passes these simple tests?" Occasionally the answer is "Not much," so I'll throw the code away and start over. It was probably perfect code, but that's not good enough.”

Daniel J. Bernstein (1971) American mathematician, cryptologist and programmer

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?selm=slrncvp1eg.170p.usenet@stoneport.math.uic.edu
On testing

Dependency, Perfection

“Fame is but a beautiful classic delusion. The inspiration of the poet is like the inspiration of the Delphic oracles: what was once held divine is now confessed the promptings of an evil spirit mocking the votaries of whom it made victims. We firmly believe that the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written. The once writers: will say—“Why should we sacrifice our whole existence to obtain a vain praise, which, after all, never comes sufficiently home to us to be enjoyed? Why should we devote, to this most barren pursuit, industry and talent, which, in any other line, would be certain of that worldly success, which, as we live in the world, is the only success to be de sired?” Even poets must at last learn wisdom. The bitterness and the hollowness of praise will be perceived; and then who will be at the trouble of writing a book? Again we repeat, the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Wisdom, Books, World, Beauty

“Yeah, especially this postmortem trip when people die and then everybody writes about what they felt that person is going through. It's really surprising to me that anyone can think that they have those kinds of insights or spend that much time really worrying about somebody else. I think they should spend more time trying to figure out who they are. That's my whole trip. I can't imagine anybody knowing me through my lyrics, because I don't particularly feel like I know myself. And I have more than the benefit of just lyrics to go on.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On people thinking that they have a connection with a band or a person through their lyrics ** Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml, Soundgarden Era

People, Feeling, Imagination, Thinking

“A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1783, p. 501
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“Never talk when you can nod and never nod when you can wink and never write an e-mail, because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.”

Eliot Spitzer (1959) 54th Governor of New York

Warning to criminals. Pressure Mounts on Spitzer to Resign Over Sex Scandal, PBS NewsHour, March 11, 2008, 2012-10-15 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june08/spitzer_03-11.html,

Death

“In 1992 by chance I witnessed a drum and bugle corps competition on television and became aware of three-valve bugles. A year later my wife, Donna, and I attended a performance in La Mirada of the previous year's winner. I have experienced fine concert band performances and also good symphonies in my life, but what was not prepared for what I experienced that day. The entire bugle corps was turned away from us playing softly and suddenly they turned toward us and projected a very thick chord. Every hair on my body stood up (and I have a lot of it) and I decided at that moment to buy some of these instruments. In the next year I purchased approximately $14,000 worth of bugles. After having completed an orchestrational family all the way down to the contrabass bugle, I began writing. This album is the result of this particular interest in my sixth decade in music.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Written in 1997, from the liner notes for Jazz Corps (1998)

Life, Family, Music, Way

“Students of administration, writes J. M. Gaus, have become "more uncertain in recent years as to the ends, aims and methods which they should advocate/' It is difficult to view in their entirety and in perspective the writings on public administration that now pour from the presses. But this is hardly necessary to confirm the truth of Gaus' statement.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 206

Truth

“Patel's speech at Bahaddin College, Junagadh: "If Hyderabad does not see the writing on the wall, it goes the way Junagadh has gone. Pakistan attempted to set off Kashmir against Junagadh. When we raised the question of settlement in a democratic way, they (Pakistan) at once told us that they would consider it if we applied that policy to Kashmir. Our reply was that we would agree to Kashmir if they agreed to Hyderabad.”

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950) Indian freedom fighter who forged united India

Gandhi, Rajmohan. Patel: A Life, p. 438

Way, Question

“We're so familiar with written language that we sometimes forget how outlandish a concept it must have seemed to our ancestors. Writing allowed people to copy and transfer their thoughts and their tribal codes of conduct to others, even unto generations they themselves would not live to personally instruct, affect or control. The words themselves must have seemed alive and immortal and as "holy" as ghosts. Written law was thus a way of mastering time and influencing the future, a weapon greater than fire and steel, I hope you'll agree. When read, the written word made the head buzz and ring and fill up with voices and commands from nowhere, as if God Himself had come thundering down through the symbols, off the page and into the room, fertilising and impregnating the mind with his Ghostly, unmistakable presence.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2005
http://suicidegirls.com/words/Grant+Morrison/
On writing

God, People, Law, Hope

“As translators, we must be courageous, free and passionate about what we are doing. We must constantly strive to enrich our own cultural and linguistic repertoire. We must read, we must write. We must be prepared to rethink, to revise, to rewrite, constantly. We must have endless time and patience. Deadlines are there to be ignored, to be kept alive. Above all we must play with words, ideas and feelings. Delight in them. We must never lose sight of the playfulness and creative licence that are the lifeblood of art and literature, and hence of translation.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Public Lecture (2018)

Art, Feeling, Literature, Idea

“We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, xxi, 9
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Men

“A white spot is on the horizon. There it is. A terrible storm is brewing. But no one sees the write spot or has any inkling of what it might mean. But no (this would not be the most terrible situation either), no, there is one person who sees it and knows what it means-but he is a passenger. He has no authority on the ship, can take no action. … The fact that in Christendom there is visible on the horizon a white speck which means that a storm is threatening-this I knew; but, alas, I was an am only a passenger.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers XI3 B 109 p 178ff (quoted in Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth by Gergor Malantschuk 1963 Augsburg Publishing House
1850s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1850s

Personality

“As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Pleasure, Dreams, Success, Training

“Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: 'I AM!”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Dolphins"

“I thank your Excellency for your generous and obliging offer. Most certain, my inclination leads me to a resignation. My reputation I value more than any advantages of gain; and I consider it in great danger. I wrote your Excellency lengthy upon this subject yesterday, and therefore shall say but little upon it to-day. I intend to write to Congress to day, upon the subject of my apprehensions and determination; and, if they do not give me those kinds of assurances, which are necessary to guard my reputation from malice and detraction. I shall insist upon leaving the business. The politics of Congress are really alarming, and the state of the finances astonishing; where they will end, time only can unfold.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Business, Time

“If we're looking for a rationale other than "Loughner was nuts," I think the more relevant facts about him are that he was an atheist who detested religion and religious people, made lots of references to satanic New Age "conscience dreaming" (sic) and was involved in the occult.
When a fellow participant on a UFO website wrote a lengthy response to Loughner's question about "what is wrong or right with the current date?" which included the subordinate clause, "a day in Christ is as a thousand years," Loughner fixated on that one line, railing, "I won't listen to that fictitious crap without the author. This is laughable to notice a gospel or writing related to Christ."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Mud Libel" (19 January 2011).
2011

People, Age, Religion, Dreams

“Posito I assume and when I say posito, I have the right to assume the unlikely; therefore posito, I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. Posito, I assume, and when I say posito, I have the right to assume what is more unreasonable than the most unreasonable; therefore; posito, I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it-then what? Let us linger for a moment on this thought, with which, of course, we have all been familiar for several years: the thought of the prospect for the hope of the system. Therefore, in order to be very brief, posito, I assume that the system appeared here in Copenhagen, then what? Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view; then we would again be saved by the promise. If this does not happen, then of course one would have to read it. How troublesome, and who would finally benefit from that?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Prefaces, Nichol, 1997 p. 39-40
1840s, Prefaces (1844)

Hope, Appearance, Reading

“The development of Christianity in all the sects of the Western world during the past two centuries has been the progressive elimination from all of them of the elements of our natively Aryan morality that were superimposed on the doctrine before and during the Middle Ages to make it acceptable to our race and so a religion that could not be exported as a whole to other races. With the progressive weakening of our racial instincts, all the cults have been restored to conformity with the "primitive" Christianity of the holy book, i. e., to the undiluted poison of the Jewish originals. I should, perhaps, have made it more explicit in my little book that the effective power of the alien cult is by no means confined to sects that affirm a belief in supernatural beings. As I have stressed in other writings, when the Christian myths became unbelievable, they left in the minds of even intelligent and educated men a residue, the detritus of the rejected mythology, in the form of superstitions about "all mankind," "human rights," and similar figments of the imagination that had gained currency only on the assumption that they had been decreed by an omnipotent deity, so that in practical terms we must regard as basically Christian and religious such irrational cults as Communism and the tangle of fancies that is called "Liberalism" and is the most widely accepted faith among our people today.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men, People, Books, Age

“Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody every writes his dream book.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

33.54
"Quotes", Notebooks

Books, Dreams, Loss

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Life, People, Books, Fashion

“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

People, Music, History, Universe

“I write to say that in the idea of the three American states' ultimate independence, whether separately or in union, I see nothing fanciful. [Such] are at present the dominating trends in the U. S. that I see no other means of ultimate preservation of cultural and societal values that will not only be endangered but eventually destroyed by an endlessly prolonged association … with the remainder of what is now the U. S. A.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

In a 1993 letter to Thomas Naylor, on the idea of the secession of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont from the US, as quoted in "Most Likely to Secede" by Christopher Ketcham in Good magazine (10 January 2008) http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/most_likely_to_secede

Idea

“I am writing graffiti on your body.
I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Both Hands
Song lyrics

Drawing

“I can write no more today. The contemplation of my sorry state has reduced me to so deep a melancholy that I contemplate opening my wrist like Petronius Arbiter and lapsing quietly into oblivion. Unlike Petronius, however, I shall have neither the sound of music nor the gentle talk of friends. I still have time to choose a better moment — besides, who knows to what nightmares I might awake.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Last lines which West had written for his unfinished work The Last Confession, about the last days of Giordano Bruno.
The Last Confession (2000)

Music, Time

“So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" My First Acquaintance with Poets http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/FirstAcquaintancePoets.htm" (1822) The Plain Speaker (1826)

Life, Happiness, Books, Thinking

“Over this period many issues have been clarified. Today we know very much more about these twenty-seven short writings from a little religious sub-culture in the Roman empire than ever before. Nevertheless, they risk being forgotten - partly because the link with the Christian history which they have influenced has been broken, partly because many of our educated contemporaries come from other religious and cultural traditions, and partly because the results of historical-critical research are so complex that many people are deterred from trying to grasp them.”

Gerd Theissen (1943) German theologian

Preface
The New Testament : History, Literature, Religion (2003)

People, Education, History

“Those who, like the present writer, never had the privilege of meeting Sidgwick can infer from his writings, and still more from the characteristic philosophic merits of such pupils of his as McTaggart and Moore, how acute and painstaking a thinker and how inspiring a teacher he must have been. Yet he has grave defects as a writer which have certainly detracted from his fame. His style is heavy and involved, and he seldom allowed that strong sense of humour, which is said to have made him a delightful conversationalist, to relieve the uniform dull dignity of his writing. He incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answers. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument: and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing. The result is that Sidgwick probably has far less influence at present than he ought to have, and less than many writers, such as Bradley, who were as superior to him in literary style as he was to them in ethical and philosophical acumen. Even a thoroughly second-rate thinker like T. H. Green, by diffusing a grateful and comforting aroma of ethical "uplift", has probably made far more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick will ever make into philosophers.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930)

Sense, Strong, Teachers, Reading

“The more I examined my emotions, the more I was able to put that in my writing. I wanted to concentrate more on human emotions and internal feelings in the characters, inasmuch as I could in an animated cartoon show—ostensibly one for a young audience. There were times when I felt I couldn’t put the depth of feeling that I wanted to in the cartoons at that time, because it’s for kids and you have to keep it kind of upbeat. But I did it where I could. And I put it in my other work as well, when I was writing things like comics and screenplays.”

Paul Dini (1957) writer

Harley Quinn co-creator Paul Dini discusses how Batman helped him heal https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/paul-dini-batman-dark-night-harley-quinn-interview/ (June 21, 2016)

Feeling, Time, Animals

“The writer is an ordinary man, not a spokesman for the people, and that literature can only be the voice of one individual. Writing that becomes an ode to a country, the standard of a nation, the voice of a party… loses its nature—it is no longer literature. Writers do not set out to be published, but to know themselves. Although Kafka or Pessoa resorted to language, it was not in order to change the world. I, myself, believe in what I call cold literature: a literature of flight for one's life, a literature that is not utilitarian, but a spiritual self-preservation in order to avoid being stifled by society. I believe in a literature of the moment, for the living. You have to know how to use freedom. If you use it in exchange for something else, it vanishes.”

Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright

Interview by Jean-Luc Douin http://web.archive.org/web/20130421061108/http://my.opera.com/PRC/blog/?startidx=560

Life, People, World, Literature

“This poet is now, most of the time, an elder statesman like Baruch or Smuts, full of complacent wisdom and cast-iron whimsy. But of course there was always a good deal of this in the official rôle that Frost created for himself; one imagines Yeats saying about Frost, as Sarah Bernhardt said about Nijinsky: “I fear, I greatly fear, that I have just seen the greatest actor in the world.”
Sometimes it is this public figure, this official rôle — the Only Genuine Robert Frost in Captivity — that writes the poems, and not the poet himself; and then one gets a self-made man’s political editorials, full of cracker-box philosophizing, almanac joke-cracking — of a snake-oil salesman’s mysticism; one gets the public figure’s relishing consciousness of himself, an astonishing constriction of imagination and sympathy; one gets sentimentality and whimsicality; an arch complacency, a complacent archness; and one gets Homely Wisdom till the cows come home.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Other Frost”, pp. 30–31
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Wisdom, World, Fear, Home

“Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England.”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

Adventures of John Longbowe, Yeoman.

“A man cannot write a poem or a story that will transform the whole nature of man, his reality and his truth, making them greater and nobler.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Truth, Nature, Reality

“I feel that if any songs are gonna come out of World War III, we'd better start writing them now.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

War, World, Feeling

“Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 13, Bits & Pieces, p. 130.

Reading

“It is also the becoming-space of the spoken chain - which has been called temporal or linear; a becoming-space which makes possible both writing and every correspondence between speech and writing, every passage from one to the other.
The activity or productivity connoted by the a of différance refers to the generative movement in the play of differences. The latter are neither fallen from the sky nor inscribed once and for all in a closed system, a static structure that a synchronic and taxonomic operation could exhaust. Differences are the effects of transformations, and from this vantage the theme of différance is incompatible with the static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs in the concept of structure.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions (1982), p. 28

“I have never even wondered about the comparative standing of writers. I don't understand that. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product is turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (1969)

Secret, Understanding, Sense, Personality

“The allegories of the "fall of man" and the "deluge," are the two most important features of the Pentateuch. They are, so to say, the Alpha and Omega, the highest and the lowest keys of the scale of harmony on which resounds the majestic hymns of the creation of mankind; for they discover to him who questions the Zura (figurative Gematria), the process of man's evolution from the highest spiritual entity unto the lowest physical — the post-diluvian man, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, every sign of the picture writing which cannot be made to fit within a certain circumscribed geometrical figure may be rejected as only intended by the sacred hierogrammatist for a premeditated blind — so many of the details in the Bible must be treated on the same principle, that portion only being accepted which answers to the numerical methods taught in the Kabala.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter IX

Question

“I always like to write three versions of a book. The first is always agony and chaos; no one could understand it. With the second you get the shape, it's more or less all right. I write both of those in longhand. The third draft I type out with two fingers: it's for refining of meaning, additions and subtractions. I think my novels usually begin with characters; you have them floating about in your head and it may be years before they get together in a situation. Characters interest me more than situations.”

Patrick White (1912–1990) English-born Australian writer

In The Making (1970)

Books, Understanding, Thinking

“I'm a writer who performs. And I mean, I'm basically a writer. I've been doing it since I was 16. … For me, the balance between the two, the writing -- a year, two years, whatever it takes to do an album, and then you've had enough of writing and thinking and being introspective and all of that kind of stuff, and you want to get out on the road and you want to, you know, get into the physicality of performing.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Larry King interview (2003)

Thinking

“The first work I published was a poem. That was one of my most exciting moments. Afterwards, I wrote many different types of articles, including prose, novels, and even science fiction. However, I found I wasn't very qualified, because I only had a four-year primary school education. So I turned to writing fairy tales.”

Zheng Yuanjie (1955) Chiese writer

Zheng Yuanjie (2008) in: "China's Hans Christian Andersen" on CRIENGLISH.com, June 19, 2008 ( online http://english.cri.cn/4406/2008/06/19/1141@370720.htm).

Education, School, Science

“Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Hugo"
Views and Reviews (1889)

Life, Death, Men, Art

“I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it. […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them. And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.”

Hisham Matar (1970) American writer

at 43:30.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

Books, Thinking, Sense

“In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).

Women, Men, Time

“What I intended to do was to burn a half dozen of my books and keep warm, so that I could write my story, but when I looked around for titles to burn, I couldn't find any.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day

Books

“Poor rhetoric, once "learning" itself, now becomes reduced to the teaching of mannerisms and forms, Aristotelian forms, for writing, as if these mattered.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Learning

“"Nude" is about an relationship I was in during that period and there is a joyful beginning and creepy end … yeah life can be cruel, but god dammit how I love to write when my life is miserable.”

Jaani Peuhu (1978) Finnish musician

Iconcrash: Interview with Jaani Peuhu, 2007-04-06, 2008-02-12 http://www.eurobands.us/2007/04/06/iconcrash-506/,

Love, Life, God

“After being in legal practice for 67 years, I was at first reluctant to write about my professional life because of what C K Daphtary once told me when I pleaded with him to write his own memoirs. “What?” he said angrily, “shall I write one like Setalvad did?” He was referring to the autobiography of a great attorney general Motilal Setalvad — in part self eulogizing. But I was getting on in age and getting forgetful as well, exemplified in that Mathew Arnold quote at the very beginning of the book: “And we forget because we must, and not because we will.” So I compromised. I wrote out the story of my life at the Bar trying to keep the old ego strictly under control. If I have not wholly succeeded, it is only because a man’s ego just cannot be suppressed!”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

On writing about his autobiography.
Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

Life, Books, Age, Quotes

“I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (30 October 1841)

Housing

“Let us suppose that the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful, and poetic things of the world. By this view the universe of man-made things simply coincides with the history of art. It then becomes urgent to devise better ways to devise better ways of considering everything men have made. This we may achieve sooner by proceeding from art rather than from use, for if we depart from use alone, all useless things are overlooked, but if we take the desirableness of things as our point of departure, then useful objects are properly seen as things we value more or less dearly.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 1

Men, World, Beauty, Art

“One does wish that Sartre would pause for a while to regroup his forces. The man really does write too much.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Ten, Sartre, p. 224

“A fish swims through the sea
While the sea is in a certain sense,
Contained within the fish!
Oh, what am I to think
Of what the writing of a thousand lifetimes
Could not explain
If all the forest trees were pens
And all the oceans - ink?”

Aaron Weiss

The Dryness and the Rain.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Thinking, Sense, Fish, Tree

“Normally, foreign media organizations and others from the developed countries do not see anything good on the African continent. Those of us, who are well-traveled, know better. In their countries, the only news you get or hear about Africa is negative news… However, due to the good work done by our electoral bodies, the exemplary conduct of our defence and security organs, and your calmness and patience, we denied them the bad things they wanted to write about.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

2007-01-01 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4572438.stm 2006

Travel, Patience, Country

“The most influential specific postmodern approach has been Jacques Derrida's, known since the 60's as deconstruction. Postmodernism is philosophy means above all the writings of Derrida, and this earliest and most extreme outlook has found a resonance well beyond philosophy, in the popular culture and its mores.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Catastrophe of Postmodenity
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

“I still have a struggle reading [dyslexia] and so I don't read much... Probably the only reason I'm painter is because I couldn't read yet I love to write, but when I write I know what I'm writing, but when I'm reading I can’t see it, because it goes from all sides of the page at once. But that's very good for printmaking.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quote from interview: 'Robert Rauschenberg talks...', Maxime de la Falaise McKendry, 6 May 1976, p. 34
1970's

Love, Reading

“And force them, though it was in spite
Of Nature and their stars, to write.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 647
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Star, Nature

“The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Afterword to "The Bagful of Dreams" in The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). First appeared in Epoch (1775), ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood.

“My dear Genron, I am forced to write to you because I can not go to see you because I am detained at Ste. Pelagie by a slight indisposition.... I eagerly await your response. Reply me right away about Cabat or Huet; my respects to your family..
Farewell, the Gouape, H.-D.
she is always in all her Charms (the Republic) - do not talk to me about politics because the letters are opened.”

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor

Quote in Daumier's letter, from prison Ste. Pelagie Prison, Paris, 9 October, 1832; as quoted on website Daumier http://www.daumier.org/14.0.html#c760 His political print 'Gargantua' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Honor%C3%A9_Daumier_-_Gargantua.jpg, published in 'La Caricature', 1832, cost Daumier six months in prison, because of insulting king Louis Philippe 1830's

Family

Quotes about writing page 16

Quotes about writing
page 16