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The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published. (Combs Jeffrey)
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us. (Combs Jeffrey)
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies. (Combs Jeffrey)
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky. (Combs Jeffrey)
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Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never! (Combs Jeffrey)
Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight. (Combs Jeffrey)
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent. (Combs Jeffrey)
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from. (Combs Jeffrey)
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. (Combs Jeffrey)
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. (Combs Jeffrey)
Our work is to present things that are as they are. (Combs Jeffrey)
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. (Combs Jeffrey)
The walls are the publishers of the poor. (Combs Jeffrey)
The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. (Combs Jeffrey)
It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work. (Combs Jeffrey)
If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts. (Combs Jeffrey)
Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. (Combs Jeffrey)
He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line. (Combs Jeffrey)
You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever. (Combs Jeffrey)
A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer. (Combs Jeffrey)
Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word. (Combs Jeffrey)
If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood. (Combs Jeffrey)
The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive. (Combs Jeffrey)
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything. (Combs Jeffrey)
I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. (Combs Jeffrey)
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