Quotes/Poems


"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties." Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)

"The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it." Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard." Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989)

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword." Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), Richelieu 

"If writers stopped writing about what happen to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages." Elaine Liner,We Got Naked, Now What, SXSW 2006

"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning." George Orwell (1903-1950), Politics and the English Language, 1946

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"An author is a fool who, not content boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book." Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

"To Knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood." George Santayan (1863-1952)

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them." P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1985), The Man Upstairs, (1914)

"Your life would not make a good book. Don't even try." Fran Lebowitz (1950-)

"After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity" George Ade (1866-1944), Fables in Slang, 1899

"If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - effort however humble, has not been in vain, nor is the writer unrewarded." Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764

"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean." Mark Twain (1835-1910), Following the Equator (1897)

Love is so short . . . And forgetting is longer . . . Pablo Neruda

When you are old ...By William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.