They Said It

While pondering my purpose as a writer I came across the quotes below.  Some are curious, others strange, but they are all true.

Enjoy!

"The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. "


--F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”


--Dashiell Hammett

"Genius gives birth, talent delivers."


--Jack Kerouac



“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.”


--Jim Tully



"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." 


-- Oscar Wilde

"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?"


-- Bennett Cerf

"Easy reading is damned hard writing."

--Anonymous

"A writer doesn't solve problems. He allows them to emerge." 


--Friedrich Dürrenmatt

"Half my life is an act of revision."

--John Irving