Ernest Hemingway said 'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar, and all great writers have had it.'

Anyone know where you can buy one of those thing?



[Edited by david bruce at 07:27 on 25 October 2003
Reason: duplicate post removed]

Jumbo, perhaps I might suggest the obvious - that WW might be well be regarded as the nearest to one of those 'SPSD's' that anyone of us is likely to find?
Andrew

Way to go, Andrew!
Dee.

We shouldn't forget Snoopy (of the late-lamented cartoon strip)
"I have a unique collection of rejection slips."

Okay, these aren't really about writing but I couldn't resist chucking in a couple of Groucho Marx quotes:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

"From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

Brilliant Terry!
They made me laugh out loud.
Dee

As Brendle quoted TS Eliot in a comment, I thought I would mention this one ...

'Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.'

T. S. Eliot

<Added>

oh and another one I couldn't resist... 'A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.'
T. S. Eliot

So, so very true, and particularly spot on about playwriting.

I like this; 'I have to start to write to have ideas'. Francoise Sagan. Simple.

Theodore Sturgeon, a great short story writer:

"I'm not a writer. A writer is someone who has to write. The only reason I write is because it's the only way I can justify all the other things I didn't do."

He's also famous for saying "Ninety per cent of everything is crap". This was in response to the question, "What do you say to the charge that ninety per cent of science fiction is crap." Sturgeon said, "Listen, ninety per cent of EVERTHINGS is crap."

Terry,

First Kotzwinkle, now Sturgeon; you know quality when it looks you in the eye. I hope you're a Ray Bradbury admirer; he and Sturgeon both don't really fit into SciFi, both being, in my opinion, great writers who can write in any form that takes their fancy, though magical realism might be the closest genre title to catch their flavour. More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels are both utterly, wonderfully exraordinary, inhabiting very similar territory to Bradbury's matchless Something Wicked This Way Comes. My favourite TS title is Derm Fool, about a sculptor who suddenly develops the ability to shed his skin.......
Anyway, back to the subject in hand. I'm no fan of the Bloomsbury Bunch, but, Virginia W said something very important very pithily - 'The cardinal act of composition is excision.'

Mike

I remember when I was in the sixth form, me and my friend Pete were great Bradbury fans, and we'd ordered a copy of his new collection from our respective libraries. We were at the library doors when they opened, and already reading the first story on the way to school. We were late for English, our first lesson. Which was interesting, in that our English teacher was always trying to get the class to read outside of the curriculum. Pete and I were far too shy to tell him where we'd been, besides he was into 'proper' writing - James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, etc - the stuff that did nothing for our sense of wonder. 'E Pluribus Unicorn' was the first Sturgeon book I read and emotionally it hit me for six - every story was rich and different, and it was after reading that book that I knew I seriously wanted to be a writer too. What I liked about Sturgeon was that he always wrote 'raw' - he wasn't a smoothie 'proper' writer with all the words in the right place and a story as sanitary as bleach. He attacked prejudice, prohibitive morals, politics, big business, and was often crude about it but he also really made me think and question my own attitudes.
Did you read Sturgeon's 'Slow Sculpture'? It was in a collection he wrote after a long writing lay-off. In the same book was 'Brownshoes' which I still think about from time to time - the story of the hippy genius who saves the world but loses the girl because she didn't believe he could become a brownshoes, join the establishment, etc, even if it was to save the world, without losing his soul.

<Added>

Whoops - I forgot this was the writing quotes forum. What about Sol Stein, from 'Stein on Writing':

'The fiction writer's primary job is creating an emotional experience for the reader.'

I would say Sturgeon always fulfilled that brief.

I like this one by Emerson: 'Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.' I'm sure he meant to mention 'woman' too, it just slipped his mind.

I guess my favourite has to be by Cyrill Connelly:

"Better to right for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."




<Added>

er...I meant, WRITE for the public, of course! What a terrible typo! Oh, the shame...

This is an acting quotation, but, it could be paraphrased to apply to writing, perhaps; 'I act best when my head is cool and my heart is warm.'

James, I hadn't heard the Cyril Connolly quote, but that gets my vote. Thanks!