Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a d...esk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He mus...t do it as a sort of ghastly joke.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking for... perfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a joyous elephant should break forth into song, his lay would probably be very much like Whitman's famous "Song of Myself." It ...would have just about as much delicacy and deftness and discrimination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplac...e. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly lik...eable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its every stop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones ...of its slenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, who could make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was born into a country without literature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty on...e can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little ...while.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is ...a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »