There is no immaculate conception in art. —Walter Kuhn More about this quote Tags: art purity Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Writer's block is what you get if you're too full of yourself and trying to be García Márquez. You sit and stare at the wall and nothing happens for you. It's like imagining you're a tree and trying to sprout leaves. Once you come to your senses and accept who you are, then there's no problem. I'm not García Márquez. I'm a late-middle-aged midlist fair-to-middling writer with a comfortable midriff, and it gives me quite a bit of pleasure. —Garrison Keillor More about this quote Tags: imagination writing pleasure problems Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. —Charles Péguy More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing! —Henry Miller More about this quote Tags: inspiration time writing Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. —Anne Lamott More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It's a nervous work. The state that you need to be in to write is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of. —Shirley Hazzard More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon, I put it back in again. —Oscar Wilde More about this quote Tags: writing poems Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Contrary to what many of you might imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks — chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write. —Fran Lebowitz More about this quote Tags: career writing Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me. —S. E. Hinton More about this quote Tags: self belief lying self-deception Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself. —Joan Didion More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse. —Florence Nightingale More about this quote Tags: success excuses giving up Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. —Immanuel Kant More about this quote Tags: action law morality Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something. —Samuel Johnson More about this quote Tags: action objections Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side. —Audre Lorde More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Let us not paralyze our capacity for good by brooding overman's capacity for evil. —David Sarnoff More about this quote Tags: capability evil good paralysis Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email