Author: cwq
“A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It’s an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can-happen-to-me, nothing-can-harm-me, nothing-can-touch-me.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.”
Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
“This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.”
Colleen Wainwright
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape…”
Pablo Picasso
“People say I know New York well. Just change Twenty-third Street in one of my New York stories to Main Street, rub out the Flatiron Building, and put in the Town Hall and the story will fit just as truly in any up-State town. At least, I hope this can be said of my stories. So long as a story is true to human nature all you need do is change the local color to make it fit in any town North, East, South, or West. If you have the right kind of an eye — the kind that can disregard high hats, cutaway coats, and trolley cars — you can see all the characters in the Arabian Nights parading up and down Broadway at midday.”
O. Henry
“Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can’t turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can’t write a story that’s got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You’ve got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life — that’s the stimulant for a story writer.”
O. Henry
“I’ll give you the whole secret of short-story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II.”
O. Henry