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Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead. (Combs Jeffrey)
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made. (Combs Jeffrey)
Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders. (Combs Jeffrey)
You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it. (Combs Jeffrey)
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence. (Combs Jeffrey)
Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold. (Combs Jeffrey)
Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago. (Combs Jeffrey)
Good writing is clear thinking made visible. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. (Combs Jeffrey)
In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain. (Combs Jeffrey)
The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way. (Combs Jeffrey)
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again. (Combs Jeffrey)
From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it. (Combs Jeffrey)
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language. (Combs Jeffrey)
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. (Combs Jeffrey)
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write. (Combs Jeffrey)
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. (Combs Jeffrey)
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth. (Combs Jeffrey)
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. (Combs Jeffrey)
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