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 »
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free- floating disagr...eeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off... slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all i...ts beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his inno...cence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wait a second while I take a swig off this bottle: it's my true and only Helicon, my Caballine fount, my sole Enthusiasm. Here, dr...inking, I deliberate, I reason, I resolve and conclude. After the epilogue I laugh, I write, I compose, I drink. Ennius drinking would write, writing would drink.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man scripturient, today, means man subservient. He is almost anachronistically nowadays in the same position as a miller or a musi...c-hall juggler or a chimney sweep. He is treated like a bastard at a family reunion. For one thing, no one believes that a writer actually writes. (Try to use writing, for instance, as an excuse for begging off a party some weekend.)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman ...whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:M"Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined." This I gave to the town clerk, and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but--" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong. I never thought the t...ime would come when I should catch myself leading off with that crack. But I feel it coming on right now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »