If You Want to Write

“These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: "I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget." But they have no slow, big ideas.”

PeopleThinkingLittlesI CanIdeasBigsCuttingBusyBudgetsMeatMiceAnnualsBig Ideas

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“I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.”

PeopleThinkingMeanSelfHateResultsConsciousnessVisionCriticismI HateBraveryOrthodoxUsualSelf ConsciousnessMatthewFussy

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“Orthodox criticism ... is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.”

PeopleFirstsHelpingImaginationTalentCriticismHelping OthersSensitiveOrthodoxModestMurdererHelping Other People

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“People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantTryingIdeasOpinionBossResolute

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“Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk. They do not know that ideas come slowly, and that the more clear, tranquil and unstimulated you are, the slower the ideas come, but the better they are.”

PeopleKnowsWritingIdeasStrongClearSpecialDrinkDrugCoffeeDrunkSmokeFrightenedGood IdeasCigarettePackagesTranquil

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“You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.”

PeopleWritingEndsTalkingAudiencePolite

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“The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.”

PeopleWayWritingBelieveWellsTouchedPretentiousnessSlough

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“Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.”

PeopleCoursesEffortFairnessLiliesCraftsman

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“...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.”

PeopleWritingFeelingsLastsShareUnderstoodImpulse

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“Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsLaughingKnow HowLaughter

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“Why should we all use our creative power....? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.”

PeopleShouldArtUseJoyFightingCompassionCreativeObjectsGenerousCompassionateJoyfulIndifferentAccumulationLivelyCreative Power

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“Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn't meant.”

PeopleWritingYoungCompanySentencesAdvertisingSingle SentenceWittiest

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“The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.”

PeopleThinkingEmptyTragedyDryIndustrious

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