Favorite quotes about writing

[Ellie G]

Addressing writers who are hesitant to submit: "Rejection is the editor's job. It is not your job to reject your own work." - Theresa Nielsen Hayden, paraphrasing John Campbell, italics mine

[JayceeEA]

Most of my favorite quotes on writing are from this website called "Advice to Writers." I added them to my RSS Feeds, and it's been simply amazing to read a quote or two each day. Link: http://www.advicetowriters.com/

[steve]

From "Full Metal Jacket"

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Pickett!

Pickett: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 0300. Infantry. Toe Jam!

Toe Jam: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 0300. Infantry. Adams!

Adams: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 1800. Engineers. You go out and find mines. Cowboy!

Private Cowboy: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 0300. Infantry. Taylor!

Taylor: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 0300. Infantry. Joker!

Private Joker: Sir, yes, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: 4212. Basic Military Journalism. You gotta be shittin' me, Joker. You think you're Mickey Spillane? You think you're some kind of a fuckin' writer?

Private Joker: Sir, I wrote for my high school newspaper, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Jesus H. Christ! You're not a writer. You're a killer!

[Down the well]

From "Full Metal Jacket"

You're not a writer. You're a killer!

Like they're mutually exclusive.

[Mira]

This one's nice:

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

-- Brenda Ueland

[poptart]

"The two most depressing words in the English language are 'literary fiction'." David Hare.

[polymath]

"Both high and low culture have produced masterpieces and works of mediocrity. It is our task to find beauty in unexpected places." [1] Sholem Stein, a fictional character invented by Henry Jacobs and Woody Leafer, '60s era Berkley Campus, California music talk radio personalities. [2]

Nobrow & Highbrow versus Lowbrow
"In literature and the visual arts: 'The notion of one art for the "cultural," i.e., the favored few in any given society and of another subart for the "uncultered," i.e., an excluded majority as deficient in Gutenberg skills as they are untutored in "taste," in fact represents the last survival in mass industrial societies (capitalist, banned word, communist - it makes no difference in this regard) of an invidious distinction proper only to a class-structured community.'" [3] Leslie Aaron Fiedler, Postmodern critic, Nobrow critic. [4]

[1] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/High_culture
[2] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Sholem_Stein
[3] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Nobrow
[4] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Fiedler

[Mira]

I love this one - it's one of my favorites:

'A rock pile ceases being a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.'

- Unknown

[dios4vida]

This is one of my favorites but I can't for the life of me remember who said it. I do remember it was a woman.

"Writing is easy. You just sit in front of the keyboard and open a vein."

Anyone know who said it?

[cheekychook]

This is one of my favorites but I can't for the life of me remember who said it. I do remember it was a woman.

"Writing is easy. You just sit in front of the keyboard and open a vein."

Anyone know who said it?

That was said by Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith , a well-known American sportswriter.

He also said “The natural habitat of the tongue is the left cheek.”

[dios4vida]

This is one of my favorites but I can't for the life of me remember who said it. I do remember it was a woman.

"Writing is easy. You just sit in front of the keyboard and open a vein."

Anyone know who said it?

That was said by Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith , a well-known American sportswriter.

He also said “The natural habitat of the tongue is the left cheek.”

Hmmm...guess it wasn't a woman after all. :-P Thanks, cheekychook!

[Nomad0404]

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly - don't know who that is though.

Phil

[cheekychook]

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
George Sand

[Bryan Russell/Ink]

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly - don't know who that is though.

Phil

Cyril Connolly was a writer and perhaps the world's most famous literary critic.

[dios4vida]

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

How timely, since I just began another walk down Rejection Road (aka Queryland). This is a good reminder than even if I get solid rejections (again) I'm still doing what I love and in the end, I'm writing because I have to, and that I do it for myself and not for everyone else.