Literature and Words

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder

 

An author who assures you that he writes for himself alone and that he does not care whether he is heard or not is a boaster and is deceiving either himself or you.

The writer must be a psychologist, but a secret one; he must sense and know the roots of phenomena, but offer only the phenomena themselves as they blossom or wither.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imaginations, we learned to talk.

Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

The effable is preferable to the ineffable.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Naming your characters Aristotle and Plato is not going to make their relationship interesting unless you make it so on the page.

Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.

If you are writing a manuscript so long that the prospect of not reading at all until you have finished is too intolerable, be sure to choose books which are as unlike your own book as possible: read technical books, history, or, best of all, books in other languages.

Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created—nothing.

often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart— you can’t plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

The most despairing songs are the loveliest of all, I know immortal ones composed only of tears.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing’s curst hard reading.

All violent feelings … produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ‘Pathetic Fallacy’.

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

They write about it.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

You write with ease, to show your breeding,

For me, a poet is someone who is “in contact.” Someone through whom a current is passing.

AS A SLEUTH YOU ARE POOR. YOU COULDN’T DETECT A BASS-DRUM IN A TELEPHONE-BOOTH.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.