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A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out. (Combs Jeffrey)
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. (Combs Jeffrey)
When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post. (Combs Jeffrey)
In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable. (Combs Jeffrey)
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Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard. (Combs Jeffrey)
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. (Combs Jeffrey)
There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work. (Combs Jeffrey)
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth. (Combs Jeffrey)
To write is a humiliation. (Combs Jeffrey)
What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors. (Combs Jeffrey)
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat. (Combs Jeffrey)
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writers are always selling somebody out. (Combs Jeffrey)
An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (Combs Jeffrey)
The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter. (Combs Jeffrey)
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. (Combs Jeffrey)
Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself. (Combs Jeffrey)
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence. (Combs Jeffrey)
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live. (Combs Jeffrey)
If you wish to be a writer; write! (Combs Jeffrey)
Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep. (Combs Jeffrey)
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. (Combs Jeffrey)
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