Dennis Palumbo's Quotes for Writers (and those who love them)

Here are some of my favorite quotes by and about writing.  I'll be constantly adding to this list, and invite you to send along any quote you think belongs here, too.
 

"The one thing all nations share is the fear that a member of the family will want to be an artist."  Anonymous

"Do not seek the Truth; rather, cease to cherish opinion." The Fifth Zen Patriarch

"I couldn't wait for success...so I went ahead without it."  Jonathan Winters

"Always do right.  This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."  Mark Twain

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."  John A. Shedd

"When you choose your fields of labor, go where nobody else goes."  Mary Lyon

"Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace."  Elbert Hubbard

"First, be a good animal."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life."  Robert Louis Stevenson

"That is what learning is.  You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."  Doris Lessing

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea." Alain

"We first make our habits, and then our habits make us."  John Dryden

"We want to create an atmosphere in which creation is possible."   Marie Rambert

"There's no safety in numbers--or anything else." James Thurber

"The lessons taught in great books are misleading.  The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just."  Anita Brookner

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."  Eleanor Roosevelt

"I yam what I yam."  Popeye

"Only the disciplined are free."  James C. Penney

"It is no use trying to sum people up.  One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done." Virginia Woolf

"The problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, and the intelligent are full of doubt."  Bertrand Russell

"An obstinate man does not hold opinions--they hold him."  Samuel Butler

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." James Joyce

"I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap."
Spanish proverb

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry as if nothing had happened." Winston Churchill

"I never feel age...if you have creative work, you don't have age or time."
Louise Nevelson

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."  Francis Bacon

"Good judgment comes from experience; unfortunately, experience comes from bad judgment."  Barry LePatner

"The best way out is always through."  Robert Frost

"Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them."  Joseph Joubert

"I have known happiness, for I have done good work."
Robert Louis Stevenson

"All pasts are like poems--you can derive a thousand things, but you can't live in them."  John Fowles

"There's only one story in the world--your story."  Ray Bradbury

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."  Shunryu Suzuki

"Good dialogue is not real speech--it's the illusion of real speech."
Ernest Hemingway

"All serious daring starts from within." Eudora Welty

"Faith and doubt, both are needed, not as antagonists but working side by side, to take us around the unknown curve."  Lillian Smith

"How do I work?  I grope." Albert Einstein

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking." Antonio Machado

"When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook, and start the whole thing over again."
Preston Sturges

"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning."  Peter DeVries

"To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men--that is genius." 
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
 

Contact: dennis@dennispalumbo.com
 
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