7. Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think
the universities stifle writers.
My opinion is that they don't
stifle enough of them.
Flannery O Conner
8. Use the time of a
total stranger in such
a way that he or she
will not feel the time
was wasted.
Kurt Vonnegut
9. Be yourself;
everyone else is
already taken.
Oscar Wilde
10. I would hurl
words into this
darkness &
wait for an echo,
And if an echo sounded, no matter how
faintly, I would send other words to tell, to
march, to fight, to create a sense of
hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
Richard Wright
11. You must stay drunk on writing
so reality cannot
destroy you.
Ray Bradbury
12. Clutter is the disease
of American writing.
We are a society strangling in
unnecessary words, circular
constructions, pompous frills and
meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
13. If you can't annoy
somebody, there's
little point in writing.
Kingsley Amis
14. All good writing
is swimming under water
& holding your breath.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. I just sit at a
typewriter &
curse a bit.
P.G. Wodehouse
17. Burn pedants in
pale fire.
Accept no fashions.
Be your own fashion.
Do not rely on
earlier triumphs.
Be new at each
appearance.
Vladimir Nabokov
18. Short words are
best & the old
words when short
are best of all.
Winston Churchill
19. The time to begin writing an
article is when you have
finished it to your satisfaction.
By that time you
begin to clearly &
logically perceive
what it is that you
really want to say.
Mark Twain
20. Suit the action to the word,
the word to the action.
William Shakespeare
21. I soon learned that one must give
up everything & not do anything
else but write, that one must
write write write.
Henry Miller
22. I believe more in the scissors
than I do in the pencil.
Truman Capote
23. I always write with a yellow pad & a ballpoint
pen, on my bed. I go into my room, I take a
walk, I take a shower, & eventually I write.
Some things come out well,
some don't. When it works,
I type it up afterward.
Woody Allen
24. The work never matches
the dream of perfection the
artist has to start with.
William Faulkner
