So, the idea struck that a topic should be made for quotes from any author, and all of us can put in our favorite(s) to share -- preferably about writers and writing, although I'm sure a few non-writing ones will be fine, too.

To start us off, here's two from Twain:

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"If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea."

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There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself....

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The difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between lightning and lightning bugs.

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"The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else."

That is a great quotation.

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The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

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I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone. MARVIN MORRIS

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Scroll down to "Never Give In."

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I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting ; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not : and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them ; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

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But I think my two favorite quotes -- and they're my favorite because they always fill me with motivation and determination -- are from Stephen King and Dan Simmons.

This is what King said in Danse Macabre:

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I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams or childhood trauma—that becoming a writer is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force. Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle. No writer is ever handed a sharp knife, and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.... If you write for an hour and a half a day for ten years, you’re gonna turn into a good writer (but, I hasten to add, only if you have the talent there to begin with).

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Anyone who spends his or her life reading inside just one genre is an idiot. (Imagine a baby who will eat only strained carrots and who grows up to be an adult, still eating strained carrots. Very, very sad.) The biggest problem I find with young would-be writers is the limited scope of their education and ambition. John Gardner, whose On Becoming a Novelist is required reading for anyone who dreams of being a writer, points out that anyone who wants to write fiction for publishing is presuming to join a dialogue of ideas that goes back millennia and that to be ignorant of what has come before in that dialogue is self-defeating arrogance. These same wannabe-writers doom themselves by looking at the lowest common denominator of writing in the genre they’ve staked out and proclaiming—“I can write better than that!” Well, so what? Better than crap is still crap in all too many cases. Unask the question, as the Zen teacher would say. The question is not “Who can you write as well as?” but “Who is the best writer you could never hope to equal?” That’s the writer you need to aspire to being, to hope to compete with even though you know that hope is doomed to failure. (Hemingway’s notebooks and letters are filled with boxing metaphors—“Today I took on Tolstoy and went three rounds with him!”) No one will ever be a great writer by thinking that he can someday write as well as, say, Stephen King or Dan Simmons. My advice to aspiring writers?—“Give up! Turn back! It’s hopeless!” Now that’s my advice to aspiring writers, since it doesn’t take any discipline or effort or guts to aspire to something. To hell with aspirants. Let the poseurs quit aspiring and creep back to their jobs at Blockbuster. To those writers out there who may not be published yet, the advice is so simple that it may be useless—keep your sights high, your ambitions in line with your discipline, and never accept the quality of what you’re producing now as the final word. It has to be better. Even after you’re published, it has to be better. Keep improving or get out of the way of those writers who hear the music and who are willing to pay a lifetime of dues to get where they want to be.

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To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.

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Comes in handy when I feel I can't do it anymore. Gets me back to my computer.

[This message has been edited by babylonfreek (edited August 17, 2004).]

The difference, and what you might be thinking of, is quoting an entire song's lyrics or a whole chapter (or a large chunk of text within a book) without permission. This violates international copyright laws (my wife is a patent/copyright administrator and knows the laws for nearly every country in the world -- but has a particular dislike for American patent/copyright law. She's English, tho'... she's still not over the whole independence thing. )

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"A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"

The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?"

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and of course

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The Librarian was, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacreligious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

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There's a thing in copyright law called "fair use" that allows for copyrighted material to be quoted, though not extensively.

I think as long as we try to keep the quotes as short as possible, we'll be okay. The only one I might be a little nervous about is the Dan Simmons quote, but that's because I don't know how big a part of the entire interview the quote is.

We have the 13-line limit for posting our own material here because that's how many lines would be on the first page of a short story manuscript. It's actually a pretty arbitrary limit, but there are reasons for it.

I don't think Fair Use has a percentage limit, but if we want to get picky, we could say that since 13 lines is about 4 percent of a 3000-word story, then we could say that quotes here should be no more than 5 percent of the source material if that material is written down (published) somewhere.

If it's something someone said, so it's short and sweet, then there's no problem. A speech or interview would have to be written down to be quoted extensively anyway, and therefore qualify under the above "rule of thumb."

I like the 5% rule of thumb for protected works, it makes sense. Unless we want to start using biliographies, but then we need to decide on a format, make sure everyone has the current rules and it becomes nothing but "work, work, work" (to quote the Dread Pirate Roberts AKA Wesley from The Princess Bride).

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Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at a keyboard and stare at it until drops of blood form on your forehead.

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Always liked that one :P

I've always liked this rhyme. Just think of all the stories an owl could pass on if only he could write

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"No novel has ever suffered for having busty lesbians. A lack of busty lesbians, in fact, is where I often feel Tolstoy went wrong."
-- Bernard O'Leary

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Recently...a women fell 11,000 feet. She was parachuting and the thingy didn't work. And she didn't die.

Why?

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"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money."
- Moliere

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"Too many people want to *have written*."
- Terry Pratchett

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Or about putting heart in your work

'Your argument is sound, nothing but sound.'
-Benjamin Franklin

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."
-Michel de Montaigne

"I write for the same reason I breathe, because if I didn't, I'd die." --Isaac Asimov.

"You always miss 100% of the shots you don't take." --Author Unknown

And "S--t befalls the unprepared." just came to me, one day (I think. I may have read it somewhere, and forgotten it. It happens). It may sound arrogant of me to put up an unpublished quote, but I wrote this one down and put it on my wall (I keep all my story notes on a wall; don't ask why). Helps me remember to not write blind; as fun as it may be at times, I always write myself into a corner.

CVG

Jim Carrey.

"First efforts are imperfect and we must allow for them in order to learn, grown and improve. When other people's more perfect art convinces us not to try -- that we must not embarrass ourselves with our first efforts -- that is when we become willing participants in killing our own creative spirit."

Although, I dare say the wires didn't absorb all her motion. She had to land somewhere -- and somehow. <ouch!>

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I almost always urge people to write in the first person…. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
—William Zinsser

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Although, I dare say the wires didn't absorb all her motion. She had to land somewhere -- and somehow. <ouch!>

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-A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

-Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

-For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

-If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

-Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

-The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

-The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.

"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." - Special Olympics Oath

I like to think that one applies to sending out stories and getting rejections.

Then there is:
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house." - Jules Henri Poincare

I think it works for writing if you substitute as follows:

Stories are built from words, as a house is with stones. But a collection of words is no more a story than a heap of stones is a house.

My favorite is a fortune cookie slip I pulled out of a cookie while asking aloud, "Will anything I write ever be published?"

It says, "You will be awarded some great honor." It also has two smileys on it. - I'll take that as a yes!