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– W.H Audi
“I came from a one syllable neighborhood.”
– Sammy Cahn (In speaking with pride that various of his lyrics had five syllables)
“Your duty is in bed.”
– General Douglas MacArthur (when asked by his mistress what she might contribute to the war effort)
“The streets don’t love nobody these days.”
– Anonymous Chicago crime victim:
“Be good and you will be lonesome.”
– Mark Twain
“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
– Oscar Wilde
“I gave up trying, it’s the first step toward failure.”
– Homer Simpson
“Whata you got?”
– Marlon Brando in the movie ‘The Wild Ones’
“To trust is good, not to trust is better.”
– Italian Proverb
“You can’t make a writer out of a born pharmacist.”
– Wallace Stegner
“This is the stuff dreams are made of.”
– Humphrey Bogart’s character in The Maltese Falcon (Based on the Dashiell Hammett novel)
“We’ll camp here.”
– John Wayne’s character drunkenly falling off his horse while leading his troops in the pursuit of Indians
“Overtime, just when you depend on it they’ll cut the sonofabitch.”
– Part of an overheard conversation
“It isn’t what you call me but what I answer to that is important.”
– African saying
“If I’m not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself only, what will I be to others?”
– Thomas Aquinas
“The Borgias ruled for thirty years and produced Di Vinci and Michelangelo. In Switzerland they practiced brotherhood and equality for five centuries and produced the cuckoo clock.”
– Orson Welles’ character ‘Harry Lime’ in The Third Man
“Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet ofconsequences.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“I think and therefore it is true that…”
– Don Quixote (Cervantes)
“She was once an ex-wife of mine.”
– Jerry Jeff Walker
“Practicing an art has nothing to do with fame or money. You aregrowing your soul.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
“It’s always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.”
– Bill Hicks
“Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
– Woody Allen
“In its transient integument called man the song flows on like the waters of eternity, washing all away, giving birth to all.”
– Isaac Babel
“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
– H.L. Mencken
“Writing is a calling, it is not a way to make a living like piloting an airplane or selling mutual funds. You do it because you can’t help doing it.”
– Paul Gruchow
“No, why should I?”
– Yankee pitcher Don Larsen when asked if he ever got tired of talking about how he pitched the only perfect game in World Series history
“Understand that heroic acts won’t come from common people, but small good acts will.”
– Gandhi
“You don’t build a movement without a mimeograph machine.”
– Maggie Kuhn, one of the founders of the Grey Panthers
Frequently Asked Questions
What made you decide to become a writer?lkdj;faldsjflkjaslkdj90328409283-409832ojlafdj;lkfnalknv;lkadj9032u9042830432
I knew it involved a lot of sitting down and I was already accustomed to rejection.
What are some simple words of advice for people who want to become professional writers?
Marry well.
I read that Stephen King is a millionaire. Do most writers get rich?
Writing is an occupation in which there is also a 1% trend. A small number of writers earn the greatest share of money spent on books. And like in the real world of actors, business people, politicians, and everyone else, talent and hard work aren’t everything. Luck is also important. Many of the finest writers alive must supplement their writing earnings through teaching or other jobs.
Why are books so expensive?
If you are a reader and I hope you are, consider how many hours of enlightenment or entertainment you get from a book. Let’s say you spend twenty hours reading a book that costs you twenty dollars. That means you’ve paid a dollar an hour for an experience that is likely to be lasting in your memory. When you are through you still have the book. If you borrow the book from a library, it costs you nothing. If you spend ten dollars to go to a two-hour movie you are paying five dollars an hour for gaining impressions that will likely disappear by tomorrow.
How do you write things that are funny?
Don’t try too hard.
What is your favorite book?
Often, it is the last one I’ve read. Over time there are four that I’ve read more than once: GRAPES of WRATH (John Steinbeck), THE GREAT GATSBY (F. Scott Fitrzgerald), ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Erich Maria Remarque), ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Who are your favorite writers?
In addition to the above: Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Graham Greene, and many others.
I’ve heard it takes a long time to learn to become a writer who makes a decent living. What is a good trick to help me get by while I am learning?
Plagiarize.
What exactly is a so-called “Work in Progress?”
An excuse.
Where do you get your ideas?
There is no special knack. They arise from everyday living and curiosity. Many non-writers possess much more vivid imaginations than mine. John McPhee, a wonderful writer of nonfiction, says that ideas are like flotsam in a stream. There are always more coming around the bend.
Poetry12345269823502
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have
patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or
unknown or to any man or number of men, re-examine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh
shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats
The Walking Man
I see him along the road,
a journeyman in all seasons.
His legs are relentless against harshest air,
with the muscled arms pumping,
driving his fists upward
toward the visor of his cap.
The black glasses fix their shadows,
showing holes for eyes,
his skull reaching, but never passing,
the limit of my land.
But on some late dawn, I know,
with the scant leaves hardly noted,
he will pass the car’s way,
front my small house and bid me
with a toss of his grim chin
to walk the downhill with him.
Or on a road riven by frost,
I shall rush to match his steps,
to heed the dare, keep the promise,
and take the closing curve.
And so we’ll pass at last,
in his wise smiled silence,
the pavement’s end together.
Paul M. Hedeen
(from When I Think About Rain)
