By
THE
BOOK
You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins and bleed.
SOME BOOKS ARE TO BE TASTED, OTHERS TO BE SWALLOWED, AND SOME FEW TO BE CHEWED AND DIGESTED.
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.
HOW LITTLE OUR LIBRARIES COST US AS COMPARED WITH OUR LIQUOR CELLARS.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism will be grasped at once.
NO HUMAN BEING EVER SPOKE OF SCENERY FOR ABOVE TWO MINUTES AT A TIME, WHICH MAKES ME SUSPECT THAT WE HEAR TOO MUCH OF IT IN LITERATURE.
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
A HISTORICAL ROMANCE IS THE ONLY KIND OF BOOK WHERE CHASTITY REALLY COUNTS.
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you’ve got something to say.
THE BEAUTY OF THE BRAIN IS THAT YOU CAN STILL BE AS GREEDY AS YOU LIKE FOR KNOWLEDGE AND IT DOESN’T SHOW.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
IF YOU CANNOT SAY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY IN 20 MINUTES YOU OUGHT TO GO AWAY AND WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT.
We read to know
THAT WE ARE
NOT ALONE.
Everything is useful to a writer, you see — every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
A GREAT MANY PEOPLE NOW READING AND WRITING WOULD BE BETTER EMPLOYED KEEPING RABBITS.
The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
IT IS ALL VERY WELL TO BE ABLE TO WRITE BOOKS, BUT CAN YOU WAGGLE YOUR EARS?
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
WHILE AN AUTHOR IS YET LIVING WE ESTIMATE HIS POWERS BY HIS WORST PERFORMANCE, AND WHEN HE IS DEAD WE RATE THEM BY HIS BEST.
A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.
ONE HATES AN AUTHOR THAT’S ALL AUTHOR.
Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce, old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and half-penny, can afford.
I CAN’T WRITE A BOOK COMMENSURATE WITH SHAKESPEARE, BUT I CAN WRITE A BOOK BY ME.
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
POETRY: THE BEST WORDS IN THE BEST ORDER.