Customer Reviews

The Writer's quotation book: A literary companion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most quotation anthologies are ponderous tomes containing those words of wisdom we sometimes need to spice up a dull speech. This book is different. It's a great collection of brief quotes by writers about writing, directed at fellow writers -- and anyone else who reads. The illustrations are taken from old woodcuts and engravings, giving the little 142-page volume a satirically antique look, while the quotes themselves come from hundreds of famous writers, both classical and contemporary. They (the quotes, and maybe the writers, too, for all I know) range from inspiring to cynical to downright absurd, but all of them will ring familiar to anybody who writes. Some favorites:

"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket" - Chinese proverb

"Books are a medium because they are neither rare nor well done" -- Gore Vidal

"From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it" -- Groucho Marx, on S.J. Perleman's first book

"The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jump into" -- Wilfrid Sheed

"The didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday" -- Robert Heinlein

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit" -- Richard Bach

"All my major works have been written in prison... I would recommend prison not only to aspiring writers but to aspiring politicians, too" -- Jawaharlal Nehru

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet but his books were read" -- Hilaire Belloc

And so on. I keep this book on my desk for those frustrating moments (minutes, hours, days, weeks....) when I find myself staring blankly at my keyboard. Leafing through this book tickles my funnybone and reminds me that others before me have faced the same frustrations. That keeps me going on my own work-in-progess because, as the Bible itself says, "Of making books there is no end." (Ecclesiastes 12:12)