Quotation Saturday

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

The reason why many people are so fond of using superlatives, is, they are so positive that the poor positive is not half positive enough for them.
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.
~A. Bronson Alcott

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
~Ray Bradbury

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too.
~Graycie Harmon

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
~Franklin P. Adams, Half a Loaf, 1927

i never think at all when i writenobody can do two things at the same timeand do them both well

~Don Marquis, Archy's Life of Mehitabel, 1933

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

~Ernest Hemingway, interview in Paris Review, Spring 1958