Quotable Quotes - February 6 through 10

02-06
Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

...it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.
― Ernest Hemingway

02-07
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
~Ray Bradbury

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.
― Margaret Atwood

02-08
When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
~Jorge Luis Borges

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.
― Franz Kafka

02-09
Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer
~ J.R.R Tolkien

Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them. Writing is still the wildest thing I know.
― Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

02-10
Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order
~ Anne Wilson Schaef

A good writer should draw the reader in by starting in the middle of the story with a hook, then go back and fill in what happened before the hook. Once you have the reader hooked, you can write whatever you want as you slowly reel them in.
― Roland Smith