Header Quotes

[Stewart]

You may have noticed that the forum's header is randomly assigned with each page view. I'd welcome any new quotes on the subjects of writing, reading, translation, and literature by writers. Preferably deceased ones, too, so that I can put a date range next to their name. The hope is that there can be hundreds of quotes in time.

[Colette Jones]

“In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.” -Andrew Maurois

[Stewart]

Thanks, Colette. Watch out for Maurois appearing. I'd never heard of him before.

[Colette Jones]

I'm not sure how I came across it, but it seemed an apt saying to put at the bottom of the documents I created for an all-female face-to-face reading group a few years ago.

[Colette Jones]

Lots of quotes to be found here.

[Colette Jones]

Originally Posted by Stewart

Thanks, Colette. Watch out for Maurois appearing. I'd never heard of him before.

Saw it pop up today - cool!

[Catch22]

I thought, even if they aren't ever used, a thread for suggesting new quotes for the WLF header could throw up some interesting nuggets. So here are some:

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
........................&
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
........................Anaïs Nin

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
........................Karl Kraus

The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
........................Jean Cocteau

Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
........................Marquis De Sade

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
........................Anatole France

[Stewart]

There already was one, Catch22. I've merged these together and kept your thread title.

[Catch22]

D'oh!

........................(~ Homer)

[Mirabell]

Death and language - each is the opposite and complement of the other. [...] If you aren't going to die, why bother writing? Why else put all that effort into something that stays behind. How do you understand you're already dying and that others are already dead? Because there is already writing. Extinction and explanation, the theft and the gift.

the words, you see - you can't wish them here when they're not, you can't stop them when they are: they'll fill your life, make your life, eat your fucking life. They can't belong to anyone. They're like land - it's not in their nature to be owned by anyone and if you try it they'll choke you - in the end they will choke and skin and bury you.

A.L. Kennedy

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by Catch22

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. -- Anaïs Nin

I know Mrs. Parker lacks gravitas, but Nin seems to be on to something here.

[Irene Wilde]

How about:

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

-- Virginia Woolf

[Irene Wilde]

I spotted Ms. Nin this morning. Thank you Stewart.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

I spotted Ms. Nin this morning. Thank you Stewart.

Yes, in a few spare minutes I added her and Mr Nabokov to the series. I have one of Mishima Yukio too, although I've not found a decent quote yet.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Stewart

I have one of Mishima Yukio too, although I've not found a decent quote yet.

"In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away — of their corrosive function — just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid."
(trans. John Bester)

"All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression."

[Stewart]

Thanks. I'll give them a shot over the weekend. Although they may be too long for the image I have.

[Mirabell]

People lie so, even we old men do. Though in a way, if there is art enough it doesn't matter, since there's another kind of truth in the arts.

- Iris Murdoch.

Pictures

[ions]

Stewart, do you have a word count you'd like us to stay well under? Beyond the obvious of course.

[Irene Wilde]

Having read the Nabokov quote, I think I will nominate Mrs. Parker after all:

To me, there are only two kinds of writers -- those who write badly and those who write well.

Or

It is the congenital curse of the writer that whatever he writes is the best he can do.

And do use a nice young picture of her, not one of her middle-aged, chronically sad photos.