John Gardner, on writing book reviews
“Writing a review isn’t really analytical; it’s for the most part quick reactions—joys and rages. I certainly never write a book review about I don’t think worth reviewing, a flat-out bad book, unless it’s an enormously bad book.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, on making a new trail
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son (1774)
“If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.”
Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (1776)
“… a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
William Zinsser, on writing
“We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”
William Hazlitt, from Literary Remains (1836)
“To great evils we submit; we resent little provocations.”
E.B. White, from One Man’s Meat
“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”
Carl Sagan, on reading
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”
J.R.R. Tolkein, on fantasy
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? … If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
Mohandas K. Gandhi, on women (from Young India, 4 October 1930)
“To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. (more…)
