"If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love,
without fun, you are only half a writer." Ray Bradbury
"A writer can make a fortune, but he can't make a living." James Michener
"The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the
freedom to starve anywhere." S. J. Perelman
"All my rejections are informative and truthful. I haven't
listened to any of them -- I'm still writing." W. Lively (Lobo)
"Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has
endowed him with the ability to write. Housman
"The difference between journalism and literature is that
journalism is unreadable and literature is unread." Oscar Wilde
"It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing, but
I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."Robert Benchley
"You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that
I have never tried to earn an honest living." G.B. Shaw
"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you can
enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." B. Russell
"A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect
an apostle to peer out." Lichtenberg
"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one." A. J. Liebling
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-
proof shit detector." Ernest Hemingway
"It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them
on the back of a check." Earle Stanley Gardner note to fussy editor
"The thing to remember is that publishers are ... exploitative, ethnically bankrupt, intellectually dishonest, and creatively impaired." Daniel Pinkwater
"Editors have to be able to spell; publishers can be illiterate." Anthony Blond
"A writer does well to listen to (editors), but not too often,
and not for too long." Jerome Weidman
"Authors are easy to get on with -- if you are fond of children." Michael Joseph
"The trouble with the publishing business is that too many people
who have half a mind to write a book do so." William Targ
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." T.S. Eliot
"An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff
and prints the chaff." Adlai Stevenson
"After being turned down by numerous publishers,
he decided to write for posterity." George Ade
"Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom." Robert Frost
"All poets are mad." Robert Burton
Poet Judson Jerome once wrote that all his life he had just tried
to "say things so that they stayed said."
"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a
stamped self-addressed envelop big enough for the manuscript
to come back in. This too much of a temptation for the editor." Ring Lardner
"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is
good is not original and the part that is original is not good." Samuel Johnson
"The covers of this book are too far apart." Abrose Bierce
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles
writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by
a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one
knows what they are." W. Somerset Maugham
"I can write better than anyone who can write faster, and I can
write faster than anyone who can write better." A.J. Liebling
"I have made this letter rather long only because I have not
had time to make it shorter." Pascal
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley