It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
Anais Nin

"Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you." -Charlie Parker

* * *

"The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious." -Lester Bangs

* * *

Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.

* * *

"Without deviation, progress is not possible." -Frank Zappa

* * *

"If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your mind before you actually arrive at your goal." -Zig Ziglar

* * *

"And how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain!" -Homer Simpson

* * *

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." -Paul Guaguin

* * *

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." -Albert Einstein

* * *

"The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." -Thomas Huxley

* * *

"Things are only impossible until they're not." --Jean-Luc Picard

* * *

" The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." ----------- Arthur Koestler

* * *

"To spread the news is to multiply it." -Tibetan proverb

* * *

"Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods." -Japanese proverb

* * *

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." -Bruce Lee

* * *

"Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people." -John Barth

* * *

"The shortest answer is doing." -- George Herbert

* * *

"I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious." -David Letterman

* * *

"The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from this encroachment will come the art that is truly monumental." -- Lazlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)

* * *

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well . . . Julian Of Norwich

* * *

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. Theodore Roethke

* * *

When the student is ready, the Master appears. Buddhist Proverb

* * *

Astonishing! Everything is intelligent! Pythagoras

* * *

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. The Buddha

* * *

Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it. John Cage

* * *

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare

* * *

The Way does not need cultivation--just dont defile it. Zen does not need study--the important thing is stopping the mind. Huang-Long

* * *

Light breaks on secret lots . . . Where logics die The secret grows through the eye. Dylan Thomas

* * *

All truths wait in all things. Walt Whitman

* * *

I and my Father are one John 10:30

* * *

Lift the stone and you will find me; cleave the wood and I am there. Jesus

* * *

Beauty is unity in variety Coleridge

* * *

Only the shallow know themselves. Oscar Wilde

* * *

There 's no feeling like having written. Dorothy Parker

* * *

"call things by their right names." Ezra Pound

* * *

"... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things." - Chekhov

* * *

"Language is a virus" William S. Burroughs Feb 5, 1914 - Aug 2, 1997 - - - -

* * *

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Hebrews 11:1

* * *

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western science.

* * *

It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea, mingling with the sun. Rimbaud

* * *

Expectations breed frustrations. Johnny Porto

* * *

Not all powers have to be discovered; some have to be regained. John Fowles

* * *

A fella builds his own sins right from the ground up. John Steinbeck

* * *

Plenty of time to be adult in the grave. Johnny Porto

* * *

There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference. William James

* * *

What have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed. -- T.S. ELIOT

* * *

it loved to happen marcus aurelius

* * *

year after year on the monkey's face a monkey face basho

* * *

the only joy in the world is to begin cesare pavese

* * *

absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great. Bussy-Rabutin, french soldier and writer (1618-1693)

* * *

Gaze not long into the Abyss, lest the Abyss gaze into thee.

Desire is the root of all suffering.


instinctive abilities are expressions of will. -- Nietszche

* * *

not knowing that one knows is best. Lao Tsu

* * *

Want not, hurt not. Buddha

* * *

Wonder. go ahead and wonder. Faulkner

* * *

Intuition is the eye of wisdom .

* * *

What I dream and what dreams me, the process wilts under scrutiny. Johnny Porto

* * *

Time is the number of motion. Aristotle

* * *

A stone is frozen music. Pythagoras

* * *

Are days and miles necessary? Pythagoras

* * *

Whose bread i eat, his song i sing.== Anonymous

* * *

Are you not mad, my friend? What time o' the moon is it? Have you not maggots in your brain? John Fletcher: Women pleased III iv. (1620)

* * *

Where Envy rokketh in the corner yond, And sitteth dirk; and ye shall see anone His lene bodie, fading face and hond; Him-self he fretteth, as i understand Anonymous

* * *

Conscience . . . shows, with a pointing finger . . . a pale procession of past sinful joys. Cowper's "Hope" 221

* * *

The world of dew Is the world of dew, And yet, and yet-- Issa

* * *

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose. Henry Kissinger

* * *

UVA UVAM VIVENDO VARIA FIT

* * *

Justice is the round in the chamber.

* * *

Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious. Oscar Wilde

* * *

If water waves wave water, and sound waves wave air, what do light waves wave?

* * *

. . . "the Wisdom of the Inward Parts . . ." Job

* * *

Capitalism exploits conformity

* * *

You never know whose eyes God's watching you through

* * *

In a dark time, the eye begins to see-- Theodore Roethke

* * *

Light breaks on secret lots . . . Where logics die The secret grows through he eye Dylan Thomas

* * *

Zen is the madman yelling "If you wanta tell me that the stars are not words, then stop calling them stars!" Jack Kerouac

* * *

Let the nothingness into yer shots. Golf In The Kingdom

* * *

Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it. John Cage Do not think that buddhas are other than you. Dogen

* * *

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -James Baldwin

* * *

"It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

* * *

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need but that he -- for some reason -- thinks it would be a good idea to give them." -Andy Warhol

* * *

GEORGE CARLINISMS

How come wrong numbers are never busy?

* * *

Do people in Australia call the rest of the world "up over"?

* * *

Does that screwdriver belong to Philip?

* * *

Does killing time damage eternity/

* * *

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?

* * *

Why is it called lipstick if you can still move your lips?

* * *

Why is it that night falls but day breaks?

* * *

Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?

* * *

Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?

* * *

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

* * *

Are part-time bandleaders semi-conductors?

* * *

Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?

* * *

Daylight savings time -- why are they saving it and where do they keep it?

* * *

Did Noah keep his bees in archives?

* * *

Do jellyfish get gas from eating jellybeans?

* * *

Do pilots take crash-courses?

* * *

Do stars clean themselves with meteor showers?

* * *

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

* * *

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?

* * *

Have you ever seen a toad on a toadstool?

* * *

How can there be self-help "groups"?

* * *

How do you get off a nonstop flight?

* * *

How do you write zero in Roman numerals?

* * *

How many weeks are there in a light year?

* * *

If a jogger runs at the speed of sound, can he still hear his Walkman?

* * *

If athletes get athlete's foot, do astronauts get mistletoe?

* * *

If Barbie's so popular, why do you have to buy all her friends?

* * *

If blind people wear dark glasses, why don't deaf people wear earmuffs?

* * *

If cats and dogs didn't have fur would we still pet them?

* * *

If peanut butter cookies are made from peanut butter, then what are Girl Scout cookies made out of?

* * *

If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags?

* * *

If swimming is good for your shape, then why do the whales look the way they do?

* * *

If tin whistles are made out of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

* * *

If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?

* * *

If you can't drink and drive, why do bars have parking lots?

* * *

If you jog backwards, will you gain weight?

* * *

If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?

* * *

Why do the signs that say "Slow Children" have a picture of a running child?

* * *

Why do they call it "chili" if it's hot?

* * *

Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game, when we are already there?

* * *

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

* * *

Quotes For Writers
"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true." -John Steinbeck

* * *

James Baldwin:
"The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody; in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all."

* * *

Richard Palmer Blackmuir (1904-1965)
"At first they'll reject everything, particularly in your case. What you do is keep sending the same poems to the same people--after a decent interval, of course. After about the fourth or fifth time, they will actually have read them, and they will hear a little bell ring that they'll call the shock of recognition, and they'll take one."

* * *

Kate Braverman
"Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating."

* * *

Jacqueline Briskin:
"It takes most of us a long time to learn our craft. So keep at it. Don't give up."

* * *

Robert Browning:
"I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, What set me off a-writing first of all. An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!"

* * *

Truman Capote:
"I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable."

* * *

C.J. Cherryh
"It is perfectly okay to write garbage - as long as you edit brilliantly."

* * *

Arthur C. Clarke
"Read at least one book a day. Study the memoirs of authors who interest you. (Somerset Maughman's A Writer's Notebooks is a good example)."

* * *

Robert Cormier
"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile."

* * *

Noel Coward:
"What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by writers who can write only when it's raining."

* * *

Rosemary Daniell
"Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it -- and yourself."

* * *

Joan Didion:
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power."

* * *

E.L. Doctorow:
"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."

* * *

Agnes De Mille (b.1906)
"The manuscript consisted of letter paper, wrapping paper, programs, envelopes, paper napkins--in short, whatever would take the imprint of a pencil. A great deal of it was written with a child crawling around my neck or being sick in my lap, and I dare say this may account for certain aspects of its style."

* * *

Allan W. Eckert
"If you would be a writer, first be a reader. Only through the assimilation of ideas, thoughts and philosophies can one begin to focus his own ideas, thoughts and philosophies."

* * *

David Eddings
"Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while."

* * *

Stanley Ellin:
"No one put a gun to your head and ordered you to become a writer. One writes out of his own choice and must be prepared to take the rough spots along the road with a certain equanimity, though allowed some grinding of the teeth."

* * *

William Faulkner:
"Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window."

* * *

Sigmund Freud:
"Writers write for fame, wealth, power and the love of women."

* * *

Roberta Gellis:
"Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary) -- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper -- will result in a story."

* * *

Allen Ginsberg, poet:
"Many writers have preconceived ideas about what literature is supposed to be, and their ideas seem to exclude that which makes them most charming in private conversation."

* * *

Theresa Grant:
"By making writing a part of your daily routine -- just like brushing your teeth -- you'll discipline yourself to work as a writer instead of a hobbyist who only writes when there's some fun to be had."

* * *

Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash."

* * *

Andrew Holleran (b.1944), American novelist
"The demonic paradox of writing: when you put something down that happened, people often don't believe it; whereas you can make up anything, and people assume it must have happened to you."

* * *

Maureen Howard: "It was unavoidable, my writing. I feel I had no choice in the matter, no more than I had about an unfortunate bone structure and a healthy head of hair."

* * *

Maureen Howard (b.1930)
"I like density, not volume. I like to leave something to the imagination. The reader must fit the pieces together, with the author's discreet help."

* * *

John Irving:
"Half my life is an act of revision."

* * *

Henry James:
"The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer....No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind."

* * *

Barbara Kingsolver
"There is no perfect time to write. There's only now."

* * *

Barbara Kingsolver
"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

* * *

Barbara Kingsolver
"This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address."

* * *

Louis L'Amour
"I took a number of stories by popular writers as well as others by Maupassant, O. Henry, Stevenson, etc., and studied them carefully. Modifying what I learned over the next few years, I began to sell."

* * *

Michelle Landsberg
"A common complaint is that children's books, especially high-quality picture-books, cost so much. All I can say is that they cost less than a dinner out or a new pair of jeans. The books I read as a child transformed me, gave meaning and perspective to my experiences and helped to mould whatever imaginative, intellectual or creative strengths I can lay claim to now. No doll or game had that impact on me, no pair of jeans ever changed my life."

* * *

C.S. Lewis
"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

* * *

Steve Martini
"If the writer has a masterpiece within, he had better save it on paper. Otherwise, none of us will ever miss it."

* * *

William Somerset Maugham:
"To write simply is as difficult as to be good."

* * *

Guy De Maupassant:
"Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing."

* * *

Gregory Mcdonald:
"Writing is not a profession, occupation or job; it is not a way of life: it is a comprehensive response to life."

* * *

Christopher Morley:
"The most valuable writing habit I have is not to answer questions about my writing habits."

* * *

Wright Morris (b.1910)
"Writing has made me rich--not in money but in a couple hundred characters out there, whose pursuits and anguish and triumphs I've shared. I am unspeakably grateful at the life I have come to lead."

* * *

David "Pasha" Morrow:
"Rules are a point to build a story around. They are a plain, solid, square foundation. If you stick to that foundation, you get a solid, plain, square building. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing notable either. To make an interesting building, you've got to go beyond that foundation, ignoring it as much as you can without having the building fall apart. The bending of the rules until the story is ready to crumble is what makes a good story-- interesting, intriguing, and plausible, but almost ready to burst."

* * *

Rheal Nadeau
"Don't sell yourself short; dare to dream. You might sell to a top market before you ever sell to a non-paying market - you won't know unless you try. In the same way, it's good to be cooperative, but don't be too humble either."

* * *

Richard North Patterson
"Write what you care about and understand. Writers should never try to outguess the marketplace in search of a salable idea; the simple truth is that all good books will eventually find a publisher if the writer tries hard enough, and a central secret to writing a good book is to write on that people like you will enjoy."

* * *

Richard North Patterson
"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with a first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing."

* * *

Tam Mossman:
"Never save anything for your next book, because that possible creation may not be properly shaped to hold the thoughts you're working with today. In fiction especially, anything that could happen, should happen."

* * *

Niyi Osundare, poet:
"One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating."

* * *

Terry Pratchett:
"Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself."

* * *

Richard Reeves
"Writing energy is like anything else: The more you put in, the more you get out."

* * *

John Saul (b. 1942)
"When I start a book, I always think it's patently absurd that I can write one. No one, certainly not me, can write a book 500 pages long. But I know I can write 15 pages, and if I write 15 pages every day, eventually I will have 500 of them."

* * *

George Sand
"The trade of authorship is a violent and indestructible obsession."

* * *

Isaac Bashevis Singer
"When I was a young boy, they called me a liar. Now that I'm all grown up, they call me a writer."

* * *

Red Smith, New York Times sportswriter
"Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

* * *

Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn:
"There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe."

* * *

John Steinbeck
"The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."

* * *

Gloria Steinem
"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

* * *

Kurt Vonnegut
"When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time."

* * *

Mary Heaton Vorse:
"The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

* * *

H.G. Wells:
"I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there."

* * *

Phyllis A. Whitney:
"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft -- then you can add all the genius you like."

* * *

Marianne Williamson
"Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse."

* * *

Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."

* * *



* * *

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his space shall never be one with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

* * *

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all. - Mark Twain

* * *

Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic. Jean Sibelius

* * *

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves. - Brendan Francis Behan

* * *

Asking a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs. - John Osborne It's those damn critics again. - Irwin Shaw

* * *

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book. - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

* * *

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself. - Irwin Shaw

* * *

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication. - Ralph Ellison

* * *

Abraham Lincoln, in a book review "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

* * *

Arthur Evans -- "Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred, is stronger than a writer's need to change another writer's copy."

* * *

Carl Sagan -- "All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."

* * *

Cicero -- "Anyone who has got a book collection/library and a garden wants for nothing."

* * *

Cicero -- "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

* * *

Clarissa Pinkola Estes -- "To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of though, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression or message that carries moment, passion and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being."

* * *

Cyril Connolly -- "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

* * *

Dame Rose Macaulay -- "It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead."

* * *

Dorothy Parker -- "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

* * *

Erica Jong -- "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.."

* * *

Frank Zappa -- "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read."

* * *

Fred Brooks, Jr. -- "...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor."

* * *

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) -- "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

* * *

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

* * *

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

* * *

Groucho Marx, 1890-1977 -- "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

* * *

H. L. Mencken -- "If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind." -- Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial "The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan."

* * *

Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot -- "The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple jeering."

* * *

J. R. Pierce, "Symbols, Signals, and Noise" [On randomly generated sentences.] -- "I think that it is hard to read such material without amusement. I feel a little admiration as well. I would never write, 'It happened one frosty look of trees waving gracefully against the wall.' I almost wish I could. Poor poets endlessly rhyme love with dove, and they are constrained by their highly trained mediocrity never to write a good line. In some sense, a stochastic process can do better; it at least has a chance."

* * *

Jeff G. Bone -- "I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution- ary literature --- I think they use 'cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books."

* * *

Kurt Vonnegut -- "Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."

* * *

Lord Brabazon -- "I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it."

* * *

Mark Twain (1835-1910) -- "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

* * *

Mark Twain (1835-1910) -- "Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

* * *

Mark Twain -- "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

* * *

Mark Twain -- "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

* * *

Mordecai Richler -- "Going Home Again" "For the record, pot, like the _Reader's Digest_, is not necessarily habit- forming, but both can lead to hard-core addiction: heroin, in one case, abridged bad books in the other. Either way you look at it, a withdrawal from a meaninful life."

* * *

Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a book review -- "This book fills a much-needed gap."

* * *

Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a letter -- "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it."

* * *

Orson Scott Card, Science Fiction author -- "Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly."

* * *

Oscar Wilde -- "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

* * *

Paul McCartney -- "Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were antimaterialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say 'Now, let's write a swimming pool'."

* * *

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

* * *

Rick Kleiner -- "...and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness. Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric typewriters please!"

* * *

Robert M. Hamilton -- "A book of quotations . . . can never be complete."

* * *

Ronald Reagan -- "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."

* * *

Roy Blount, Jr. -- "The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'

* * *

Russel Lynes -- "Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."

* * *

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses -- "A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."

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Samuel Goldwyn -- "I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead."

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Samuel Johnson -- "What is written without effort is read without pleasure"

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Sir Henry Wotton, "Reliquae Wottonianae" -- "An ambassador is a man of virtue sent to lie abroad for his country; a news-writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for himself."

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Solomon Short -- "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."

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Rita Mae Brown -- "A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all."

* * *

Rita Mae Brown -- "I don't expect executives to be creative but I do expect them to have courage."

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Steven Wright -- "I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose."

* * *

Steven Wright -- "I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done."

* * *

Steven Wright -- "My girlfriend does her nails with white-out. When she's asleep, I go over there and write misspelled words on them."

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Thomas Berger -- "Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."

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Thomas S. Thomas -- "Talk is cheap. Poetry economical"

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Umberto Eco on why he wrote the novel "The Name of the Rose." -- "I felt like poisoning a monk."

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Virginia Woolf -- "I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it."

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Winston Churchill (1874-1965) -- "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

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Winston Churchill (1874-1965) -- "It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

* * *

Woody Allen -- "How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

* * *

Stephen Pile -- Success is overrated and Man's real genius lies in quite the opposite direction. Being really bad at something requires skill, panache and utter individualism. Submitted by Martin Woods

* * *

Robert Louis Stevenson-- Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

* * *

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.
Anais Nin

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Anais Nin

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin

Dreams are necessary to life.
Anais Nin

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Anais Nin

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
Anais Nin

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anais Nin

Good things happen to those who hustle.
Anais Nin

He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie.
Anais Nin

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
Anais Nin

I know why familles were created, with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.
Anais Nin

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.
Anais Nin

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.
Anais Nin

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.
Anais Nin

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
Anais Nin

If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.
Anais Nin

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin

It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.
Anais Nin

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Anais Nin

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Anais Nin

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anais Nin

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
Anais Nin

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
Anais Nin

Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
Anais Nin

People living deeply have no fear of death.
Anais Nin

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
Anais Nin

The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human, as man who created a child and then, by his absence, left the child fatherless and then Godless.
Anais Nin

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
Anais Nin

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
Anais Nin

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Anais Nin

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
Anais Nin

There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.
Anais Nin

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
Anais Nin

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
Anais Nin

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
Anais Nin

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais Nin

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
Anais Nin

What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?
Anais Nin

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Anais Nin

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Anais Nin

Dont squat with your spurs on.

* * *

"Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream." -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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