The jaws of power are always opened to devour and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
– John Adams (1735-1826) A Dissertation on the Canon and Federal Law
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Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers . . . if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
To while away the idle hours, seated the livelong day before the ink slab, by jotting down without order or purpose whatever trifling thoughts pass through my mind, truly this is a queer and crazy thing to do!
I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. . . . It is far easier to write ten passably effective sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.
In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning.
One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.
Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
The jaws of power are always opened to devour and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
To while away the idle hours, seated the livelong day before the ink slab, by jotting down without order or purpose whatever trifling thoughts pass through my mind, truly this is a queer and crazy thing to do!
I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. . . . It is far easier to write ten passably effective sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.
Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
