Society and the World

There is no doubt about it, in the twentieth century if you are to come to be writing really writing you cannot make a living at it no not by writing.

Write out of love; write out of instinct; write out of reason. But always for money.

Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Writing fails because the writer does not know enough about his material. If he knows enough he will feel enough.

Yvetot [a small town in the north of France] is as good as Constantinople.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude.

Be in love with yr life Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind Blow as deep as you want to blow Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency … to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

Bow down before them. They know what they are doing.

The editor is a specialist about reading. His specialty is what is sufficiently general and common between a possible readership and what the author has to say. The tool he works with is himself. If the author cannot reach him, he can’t reach the editor’s readership either.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

American writers drink when they are “blocked” and drunkenness—being a kind of substitute for art—makes the block worse.

Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication.

Stick to Zen. Fuck the work .

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.

All men begin their learning with Homer.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Whoever thinks that he alone has speech, or possesses speech or mind above others, when unfolded such men are seen to be empty.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.