A Few Quips that feel Appropriate

 

It may be a smile now, but every serious writer knows it isn't always fun and games. Here are a few that feel appropriate... 

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."  ~Author Unknown

"I love being a writer.  What I can't stand is the paperwork.  ~Peter De Vries"

"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

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life."  ~James Norman Hall

"Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague." ~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."  ~Elmore Leonard

"Every writer I know has trouble writing."  ~Joseph Heller

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.  By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say."  ~Mark Twain

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."  ~Gustave Flaubert

"Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks." ~Peter S. Prescott

"There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write."  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."  ~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

"The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."  ~Alfred Kazin, Think, February 1963

"The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” - Mark Twain (1835-1910 – humorist and writer)

“The trouble with young writers is they’re all in their sixties.” - W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965 – British novelist and playwright)

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."  ~Robert Benchley

"Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs.  'I don't know how to sell this,' they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. 'I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this.' In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job." - Donald Westlake (1933- American mystery writer and author of more than 100 books)

“A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.” - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862 American naturalist, poet and philosopher)

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” - Socrates (BC 469- 399 Greek philosopher of Athens)

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.  ~Hannah Arendt

"So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it."  ~Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948