In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the... facts printed in black ink.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is wh...y books are so negligible nowadays.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Paper is soft and ink is fluid; it might be better if some pages of this chronicle could be written on chips of granite at the poi...nt of steel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficien...t, philanthropic self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jum...p, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next--life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was--a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand--a business as safe and commendable as ma...king soap or breakfast foods--or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not ...hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, I know you haven't had much experience writing and none at all in pictures. But I've heard about you. It all sounded like yo...u're just the man I wanted for a story about the Navy. I don't want a story just about ships and planes. I want a story about the officers.... I want this story from a pen dipped in salt water not dry martinis. Do you know what I mean?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves fro...m any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »