A fascinating collection of insightful comments about writers and their craft.
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"Writers should work alone. They should see each other only after their work is done, and not too often then. Otherwise they become like writers in New York. All angleworms in a bottle, trying to derive knowledge and nourishment from their own contact and from the bottle." --Ernest Hemingway
"The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your esthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel." --W. Somerset Maugham
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein." --Red Smith
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." --Anton Chekhov
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein." --Red Smith
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." --Anton Chekhov
From the Back Cover
Who among us hasn't dreamed of penning the perfect poem, a short story that would impress even Hemingway, or the next Great American Novel? With so much value placed on the writer's instrument - it is, after all, "mightier than the sword" - it's no wonder that so many of us long to use it to express our unique take on the human experience.
But who are the ones who make it and how? In spite of the eventual success of the well-known writers in this collection, many of them had to journey to the dark midnight of their souls and back. Here is Flannery O'Connor on the insidious lure of the Hollywood machine; Stephen King on his disregard for the perfectly grammatical sentence; Norman Mailer on the emotional turmoil of novel writing; Anne Lamott on the daily discipline it takes to bring a work to fruition; and many others.
The Quotable Writer is the perfect gift for the dabbler, the professional writer, the teacher, and the dreamer. These carefully selected quotations capture the wisdom and wit of the world's best-known writers, from Mark Twain to Mary Higgins Clark, Aristotle to Truman Capote. Included are sections on writing habits, finding the muse, transcending writer's block, dealing with editors, facing the critics, as well as managing success and rejection. This compilation is sure to inspire, entertain, and enlighten writers and readers everywhere.
But who are the ones who make it and how? In spite of the eventual success of the well-known writers in this collection, many of them had to journey to the dark midnight of their souls and back. Here is Flannery O'Connor on the insidious lure of the Hollywood machine; Stephen King on his disregard for the perfectly grammatical sentence; Norman Mailer on the emotional turmoil of novel writing; Anne Lamott on the daily discipline it takes to bring a work to fruition; and many others.
The Quotable Writer is the perfect gift for the dabbler, the professional writer, the teacher, and the dreamer. These carefully selected quotations capture the wisdom and wit of the world's best-known writers, from Mark Twain to Mary Higgins Clark, Aristotle to Truman Capote. Included are sections on writing habits, finding the muse, transcending writer's block, dealing with editors, facing the critics, as well as managing success and rejection. This compilation is sure to inspire, entertain, and enlighten writers and readers everywhere.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
McNuggets of Wisdom for Writers,
By
This review is from: The Quotable Writer (Hardcover)
Lamar Underwood has assembled a collection of brief quotes from writers about writing. The book's eleven chapters cover topics ranging from the writing process to critics, fans and publishers. These are all very short quotes--one or two per page with plenty of white space.
Ten of my favorite shorts: 1. Elmore Leonard - "Try to leave out the parts that readers skip." 2. Flannery O'Connor - "There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." 3. F. Scott Fitzgerald - "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." 4. E. L. Doctorow - "You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." 5. Adlai Stevenson - "An editor separates the wheat from the chaff--and prints the chaff." 6. Red Smith - "Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein." 7. William Faulkner - "Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's first-rate. If not, there's not anything can help it much." 8. W.H. Auden - "One cannot review a bad book without showing off." 9. Russell Lynes - "Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it." 10. Gertrude Stein - "Remarks are not literature." There are a number of good, short, thought-provoking quotes. Did I mention they are short? My personal taste runs more to longer discussions of a writer's perspective, like Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Happily, the book supports this preference with a thorough Works Cited section that points to author autobiographies and other book-depth examinations of writing. Nice save!
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