Quote Me on This

Here is a nice little site for quotes from famous authors. I've listed some of the ones I enjoyed the most below. Any quips of mine are listed parenthetically in red italics.

"There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder."
- Brian Aldiss

"Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them."
- Isaac Asimov (don't you just love IA?)

"If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor."
- Edgar Rice Burroughs (no truer words...)

"The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home."
- John Campbell

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."
- Truman Capote (if only I believed)

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."
- Willa Cather

"I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties."
- Agatha Christie (Thank you, Agatha. We appreciate your faith in us. Love, Pearce & Story)

"Never throw up on an editor."
- Ellen Datlow (of all the advice, this is probably the best I've read)

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."
- William Faulkner

"Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at."
- David Gerrold

"Half my life is an act of revision."
- John Irving (I know the feeling)

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."
- Franklin Jones (that about sums it up as long as he includes dead people)

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (which is great for the reader but oh so unfortunate for the writer)

"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to."
- Somerset Maugham (think I've heard this one before)

"If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write."
- Somerset Maugham (Somerset has some good quotes, I must say)

"There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write."
- Terry Pratchett (TP is hilarious)

"Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none."
- Jules Renard (hopefully no one notices me slipping this one in here)

"Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different."
- John Scalzi (good to know, better to believe)

"Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words--the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered."
- J. Michael Straczynski (y'know, J. Michael Straczynski is writing the Amazing Spider-Man comic these days)

"The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible."
- Mark Twain (boy, he had a way with words)

"No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing."
- E. B. White

You can read a lot of other quotes at the site if you have the time. Hope you enjoyed some of these. And one day, you're going to find Ken Story's name after quotes like these -- mark my words!!!

Writing