Quotable Quotes!

These may make you laugh at first, but seriously, they do speak truth ...LOADS of truth!
I am interested in seeing your responses as to which is your favorite! (and why...)
ENJOY

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

PROOF-READER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world -- they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.
- C. N. Bovee

Literature is all, or mostly, about sex.
- Anthony Burgess

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
- Truman Capote

My task...is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see. That - and no more - and it is everything.
- Joseph Conrad

A word is dead/When it is said,/Some say./I say it just begins/to live that day.
- Emily Dickinson

The virtue of books is to be readable.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
- Gene Fowler

More to come!

I took this passage from a book of Earnest Hemingway's comments on writing, this passage was taken from Death in the afternoon p.191.

I really like the slight biting tone …

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of those subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writers assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time."

I really liked this passage for a two main reasons. First off, the idea of us creating people rung true (Joanna, you even used the word people in your comment). Secondly, I like the idea that for our work to be memorable we need to stay true to these people we create.

Some of you guys have already talked about how a character has to earn its keep and how its hard to throw them away because we created them. Hemingway says these 'people' come from our ' knowledge…experience….heart …and all there is of us'. –no wonder it is so hard to 'kill' them! According to Hemingway, what we have to do is make everything the character says or does relevant to the story or to the person we are creating; not just beautiful words for the sake of their beauty or irrelevant description or ramblings.

This is easier said than done. Sometimes I get a phrase stuck in my head and it sounds so great I just have to stick it in, or I get caught up with typical reactions to situations. I have to learn to ask myself is this what my 'person' would say or do? I'm going to try and work on this and hopefully I will end up with a really memorable character/person.

Anne Michaels on Writing

Anne Michaels is the author of one of the most wonderful pieces of literature I have ever read—Fugitive Pieces. It is so carefully and poetically written. If you haven’t read this novel yet, I suggest that you do it. Also, if you enjoy poetry, her collection, The Weight of Oranges, is also equally beautiful.

“Writing the book meant grappling with questions about faith, goodness and the existence of evil--an endeavor that Michaels initially tried to avoid because she found it too daunting. But over time, the characters’ voices became too insistent to ignore.

‘For me, writing is a question of supreme control and complete surrender. Both are essential, and you need to know when to do each.’” - Anne Michaels in an interview with McLeans. (Full article: http://www.geocities.com/annemichaels/MacleansHonorRoll.html).

What do you guys think?