Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
-Henry David Thoreau
Quotations
Writer
She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.
-Cynthia Voigt
"When She Hollers"
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
-Ernest Hemingway
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
-Anaïs Nin
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
-Cyril Connolly
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.
-Truman Capote
"Truman Capote: Conversations"
Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.
-Nelson Mandela
A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.
-Tom Bissell
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
-Jean Cocteau
