Charlie Brown: 'How do you know which poems to like?'
Lucy: 'Somebody tells you'.

Reviving this rather old thread, because it seemed the best place to put a couple of quotes I came across recently and liked.

The first I think I may have read elsewhere on WW, though I'm no longer sure where. It was a Terry Pratchett: 'The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.'

Second is Ezra Pound: 'Fundamental accuracy of statement if the one sole morality of writing.'

Goodness, this goes back a long way - to the dawn of WW by the looks of it.

I don't know the exact words because it was copied down from Pratchett's recent documentary and I can't write that fast:

The first draft is like a hunter laying out his traps, while editng is then going back to brush out the tracks.

That's a great one, Naomi. I like this one, although I don't know for sure if the writer who was supposed to have said it really did: Richard Ford: I feel at times that I’m making up these little people and I’ve lost my mind. [www.barbarabretton.com].
[I like the idea that he only feels it 'at times'which would suggest he really has lost it]
Becca.

Anthony, great one from Pratchett, how very true that is, and I can see Ezra Pound saying his quote to T.S. Elliot.
Becca.

My favourite is John Cooper Clarke's haiku on writing haiku

to express one's mood
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic

I saw him perform it live in a pub in Finsbury Park 25 years ago and it still makes me laugh.

Oh I love JCC. "Chickentown" is brilliant!

Oh, Cherys, that's fab! Made me laugh so much, on a not very laughy day.

Emma

If I can write before I die
One line of purest poetry,
Or crystallise for all to share
A thought unique, a moment rare
Within one sentence clear and plain
Then I shall not have lived in vain.

Mary Wilson.


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Haha!!!
Just checked back through this thread, and see that I posted the same quote six years ago... yikes!

Dee


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Love that quote, Cherys!

Cherys - I laughed my head off at that!

'Writing's easy, you just sit down and open a vein.'

I think possibly Hemmingway's.

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No - Red Smith, sports journalist and Pulitzer prizewinner.

These are all great. I don't know if I have a favourite writing quote, but I do agree that
The man who never made a mistake never made anything
and came across a rather intriguing one the other day:
Ends and beginnings - there are no such things. There are only middles.
which is actually from a Robert Frost poem, In the Home Stretch. I am really into his middle period poems - they are short stories, really, and excellent ones.

Some great quotes on this thread.

My favourite (and I can't remember who said it):

"Writing is easy - all you have to do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

and this one, which isn't strictly about writing but it makes me laugh anyway:

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."
Woody Allen

Aye thah knows I think I agree wi' this one.

From Charles Bukowski :


"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

Hi Russ,
that would scare me off writing!
Becca.