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Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
-Jorge Luis Borges
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Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
-Jorge Luis Borges
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A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life.
-Jorge Luis Borges
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It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.
-Jorge Luis Borges
cited in A biographical study of a poet of Buenos Aires by Evaristo Carriego, 1930
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The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.
-Jorge Luis Borges
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A book should be luminous not voluminous.
-Christian Nevell Bovee
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Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.
-Catherine Drinker Bowen
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For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
-Catherine Drinker Bowen
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Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
-Ray Bradbury
Zen in the Art of Writing (p. xv)
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I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.
-Ray Bradbury
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My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down - everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
-Ray Bradbury
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Richard Bach with this book does two things. He gives me Flight. He makes me Young. For both I am deeply grateful.
-Ray Bradbury
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Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.
-Jimmy Breslin, "Times (London)", May 9, 1990
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In sissy times, like these, one
-Joseph Brodsky
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Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
-Joseph Brodsky
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But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.
-Charlotte Bronte
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Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence -- a lot passes you by -- simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
-Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
-Anita Brookner
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Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
-Mel Brooks
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I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
-Mel Brooks
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If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.
-Joyce Brothers, On KNBR radio station (San Francisco), November 13, 1990
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Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.
-James Bryce
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Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation.
-Pearl Buck
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Beneath the rule of men entirely great,The pen is mightier than the sword.
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Richelieu, Act II, sc. 2, 1839
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Books about Authors & Writing
