Theophile Gautier on Writers as Artists

“Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.”

~ Theophile Gautier

Source: BrainyQuote

Ève Curie on Peace at Any Price

“We discovered that peace at any price is no peace at all…that life at any price has no value whatever; that life is nothing without the privileges, the prides, the rights, the joys that make it worth living and also worth giving…and that there is something more hideous, more atrocious than war or than death; and that is to live in fear.”

~ Ève Curie (born Ève Denise Curie Labouisse, December 6, 1904 – October 22, 2007)

Source: GoodReads

Joan Didion on the Impulse to Write

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

~ Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934), Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: GoodReads

Joseph Conrad on His Dislike of Work

“I don’t like work–no man does–but I like what is in the work–the chance to find yourself. Your own reality–for yourself not for others–what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

~ Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad ‪Nałęcz‬ Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857  – 3 August 1924)

Source: GoodReads

Theodora Goss on People and Adventures

‎”I think there are people who don’t have adventures, and people who have adventures, and (rarest of all) people who are adventures.”

~ Theodora Goss

Source: Theodora Goss on Facebook

George Eliot on Control, or It’s Lack, in Writing

“Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.”

~ George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III

Source: WikiQuote

Schuster on the Distinction between an Editor and a Publisher

“You ask for the distinction between the terms “Editor” and “Publisher”: an editor selects manuscripts; a publisher selects editors.”

~ M. Lincoln Schuster

Source: “Writing.” Ink.

George Saunders on the Sameness of Life

“I don’t think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.”

~George Saunders (born December 2, 1958)

Source: Successories: iQuote

Jack Kerouac on People

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

~ Jack Kerouac, born Jean-Louis Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), On the Road

Source: American Society of Authors and Writers, It Happened in History: Jack Kerouac

 

Rex Stout on the Relationship Between Genius and Getting There

“Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn’t leak and no tire is flat.”

~ Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975), The Doorbell Rang

Source: GoodReads