Most people are not really free: V.S. Naipaul
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness …
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Mickey Spillane: The older, the better
If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he …
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Samuel Johnson: Reading and making of a book
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” —Samuel Johnson
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Eudora Welty: Taking Life as it Exists
“The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain …
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John Updike: Of Heroes and Kings
“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make …
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Jack Kerouac: Of talent and genius
“Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they’re …
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Elmore Leonard: Of verbs and adverbs
“Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’ . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The …
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Walter Mosley: Write every day
“If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. The consistency, the monotony, the certainty, all vagaries and passions are covered by this daily reoccurrence. You …
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John Updike: We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings
“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make …
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Gloria Steinem: Writing the only thing
“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” — Gloria Steinem
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