To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.
-Truman Capote
"Truman Capote: Conversations"
Quotations
Writer
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
-Karl Marx
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
-Jean Cocteau
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
The writer must be playful and serious at the same time.
-W. Somerset Maugham
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
Most people write so they can remember things; I write to forget.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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"
A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.
-Tom Bissell
