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Mr Wells
-George Orwell
essay Wells, Hitler And The World State
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One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.
-Cynthia Ozick
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-Dorothy Parker
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If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.
-Dorothy Parker
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I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
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If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
-Blaise Pascal
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The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
-Blaise Pascal
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
-Octavio Paz
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I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
-Walker Percy
Interview, 1989
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Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
-Harold Pinter
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When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.
-Luigi Pirandello
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I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.
-Luigi Pirandello
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When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
-Enrique Jardiel Poncela
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Most authors steal their works, or buy.
-Alexander Pope
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Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
-Alexander Pope
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Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?
-Alexander Pope
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True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
-Alexander Pope
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Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.
-Cole Porter
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The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
-Ezra Pound
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It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.
-Ezra Pound
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Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
-Ezra Pound
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Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.
-Ezra Pound
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I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.
-Marcel Proust
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I don't believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?
http://www.philip-pullman.com/about_the_writing.asp
-Philip Pullman
answering What do you do about writer's block?
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Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.
-Craig Raine
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Books about Authors & Writing
