Quotes

 The first 15 of my favorite literary & writing quotes...


 #1: Think much, speak little, and write less.
 —Italian proverb







 #2: It's the story that counts.
 —Margaret Atwood







#3: The first question...is: "Have I things in my head which I need to set forth, or do I merely want to be a writer?" Another way of putting it is, "Do I want to write--or to have written?"
—Jacques Barzun





 #4: My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.
—Joseph Conrad






#5: An old gentleman...declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare...He also told a lady...that cats as a matter of fact do not go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much...thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare...
Indeed, I would venture to guess that ANON, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was a woman.
—Virginia Woolf

Note: Maggie, pictured here, is the mascot, guard cat, and editorial assistant at http://www.helpingyougetpublished.com/
#6: Writing is...seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder...of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life.
—Nadine Gordimer






#7: The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.
—Marty Feldman






#8: Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
—Mark Twain





#9: Most adverbs are unnecessary...Don't write that someone clenched his [or her] teeth tightly--there's no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs.
—William Zinsser





#10: The adjective is the enemy of the noun.
—Michael Dirda

# 11: The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
—Clifton Fadiman



#12: In moderation, adjectives and adverbs have their place. Be selective.
—Patricia Anderson







#14: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
—George Orwell





#15: I have always regarded fiction as an essentially rhetorical art—that is to say, the novelist or short-story writer persuades us to share a certain view of the world for the duration of the reading experience, effecting, when sucessful...rapt immersion in an imagined reality.
—David Lodge






Subsequent quotes will be posted to the Home page and listed in the Blog Archive.

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