Today's Quotes to Mull Over

Words on writing - by some of the best; makes you think....

1) It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
- Ernest Hemingway

-What does it mean to be "qualified" 

2) Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

- Mark Twain

-No wonder the world today frustrates to many intellectuals... most people are full of shit.

3) A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

- Joseph Conrad

-We reveal the ugly truths, not the beautiful lies... doing anything but would be blasphemous to a true writer/thinker

4) People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

-Never truer than these times (though they were probably just as true to him in his time...)

5) Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.

- William Faulkner

-Not just writing, but life in general. Happens too rarely these days, at least in the world I find myself in.

6) No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

- E. B. White

-Same goes for any kind of storytelling.

 

7) “The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.” 
― Philip K. Dick

-No words, simply mesmerizing - and one of the few undisputed truths I've read of late.

8) “Writing is a little bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. Then you do it for money.” 
― Molière

- cynical yet informative

9) “Of all the alchemies of human connection--sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship--the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.” 
― Adam Gopnik

-We all are the center of our own worlds, and anything that relates to us, relates specifically to us. 

10) Writing is its own reward.

- Henry Miller

-Fuck the haters.