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My job [as a writer] is to awaken in the reader his or her own sense of wonder.
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
"Book after book, I get hooked, every time the writer talks to me like a friend."
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.
There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of the past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars, to help him endure and prevail. See Poets & Writers
It is his [the poet's, the writer's] privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. See Poets & Writers
He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers
He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. See other 'Poets & Writers'
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
DEAR Tom: A thought that has occurred and reoccurred to me during my vacation is that some capable writer should do a biography of your life. This thought came to me because of my constant concern, publicly and privately, in the combating of the trend toward excessive paternalism in Government. As you know, I constantly preach individual initiative and acceptance of individual responsibility if we are in the long run to avert Statism. It seems to me that an account of your life would be a story of practicable achievement in the free enterprise system that would be far more effective in support of my argument than almost anything else could be. You have been known as one of the liberal leaders of industry; your own personal record as well as that of your company under your leadership should bring home many lessons to the participants in the industrial strife that now plagues the nation. There are undoubtedly many writers and scholars who would like to write a biography of you. It might even be done best as a "collaboration" effort by two or more writers. In any event, it is my thought that maybe you will be sufficiently interested to talk it over with me when I am in New York. Cordially, IKE
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
I have read and heard a good many statements by eminent writers and speakers to the effect that our liberty of which we are justly proud is an achievement, and not a gift. In the sense that it had to be worked for, fought for, and preserved with vigilance these statements are true. But let it never be forgotten that our concept of liberty is a gift. No human is the author of that concept. Many great men have so recognized it as did Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and declared that "men are endowed with certain inalienable rights." Why are these rights inalienable? Because men did not create the right to liberty! In the exercise of his free agency he may surrender his privileges, and his property, and he may become the slave of others or of the state, but his free agency is as native to him as the air he breathes. It is part and parcel of his eternal constitution, and Jefferson was "righter than I think he himself knew" when he declared it an endowment which cannot be alienated. The message which we bear affirms that God is the Author of our inalienable liberty; that men, all men are of noble lineage, sons and daughters of the Eternal Father; and that liberty is their birthright. I thank God that . . . noble men were blessed with this lofty concept of man's inherent right to liberty and that they were prompted to incorporate these divine principles in the organic law and history of our favored land.
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize. He became a member of the National Institute in 1935.
Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?"
Writers will happen in the best of families.
Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.
