{ Carpe Verbum } Forum Your Favorite Quote

Ok, I need your help with something. I need to know what your favorite quote about writing is. Please, the shorter the better. Here are a few examples:

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -Rudyard Kipling

or

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie." -Stephen King

or

"Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible." Francis Bacon

I ask you this because I have an idea for a tattoo and I've been researching tons of quotes but I know I'm not getting them all. So if you were to get a quote tattooed on you somewhere, what would it be? Please, keep it about writing, if you can. If not, mention it anyway. I have one by Vonnegut ("Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.") that is slightly ahead of King's quote but it's not necessarily about writing, per se. So tell me anyway. I want to hear it.

Thanks!!

Adam Greenfield

Believe it or not, Adam, i've got whole bank of these saved onto my computer, along with an endless stream of those Chuck Norris facts. Here's ten for ya:


"I hate writing; I love having written." - Dorothy Parker

"Writers get to treat their mental illnesses every day." - Kurt Vonnegut

"When a writer is born into a family, that family is finished." - Czeslaw Milosz

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

"A writer is a controlled schizophrenic". - Edward Albee

"The best revenge is to write about it. - Meg Cabot

"I write to find out what I'm talking about." - Edward Albee

"We write to taste life twice." - Anais Nin

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." - Ray Bradbury

My favorite:
"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to." - W. Somerset Maugham

Absolutely perfect. I love that Maugham quote. Thanks!! More please!!!!!

Here are a few quotes on writing for you.

"The desire to write grows with writing."~ Erasmus

"To write simply is as difficult as to be good."~ Somerset Maugham

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance."~ Alexander Pope

"Poetry: the best words in the best order"~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."~ William Wadsworth

"Easy reading is damned hard writing."~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Writing is only boring to those people who are boring themselves."~ Unknown

And last but not least one of my favorites

"Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and writen by reason."~ Andre Gidi

Just wanted to add that the Anais Nin quote from Annie has a second part to it. ::biggrin:: The full quote is...

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in the retrospection."~ Anais Nin