Term
| "The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that..." (Russell Baker) |
|
Definition
| "...I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any." |
|
|
Term
| "I would like to write you some news, Billy, but unfortunately, I haven't got any to write. I couldn't write it, though, if I had..." (Mark Twain) |
|
Definition
| "...for I am in a bad humor, and am only writing anyhow, because I hate to lose the opportunity." |
|
|
Term
| "When I sit down at my computer with a blank screen..." (Andy Rooney) |
|
Definition
| "...I often feel like going back to bed. Sometimes nothing comes to mind to write about." |
|
|
Term
| "Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen..." (Francoise Sagan) |
|
Definition
| "...and not a shadow of an idea of what you're going to say." |
|
|
Term
| "Writing is..." (Pete Hamill) |
|
Definition
| "...the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting." |
|
|
Term
| "I think I did pretty well, considering..." (Steve Martin) |
|
Definition
| "...I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper." |
|
|
Term
| "A work has form insofar as one part of it..." (Kenneth Burke) |
|
Definition
| "...leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence." |
|
|
Term
| "The most important sentence in a good book is..." (Paul Horgan) |
|
Definition
| "...the first one; it will contain the organic seed from which all that follows will grow." |
|
|
Term
| "The adjective is..." (Voltaire) |
|
Definition
| "...the enemy of the noun." |
|
|
Term
| "Short words are best and..." (Winston Churchill) |
|
Definition
| "...the old words are best of all." |
|
|
Term
| "Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is..." (?) |
|
Definition
| "...profound, but because it is wrong." |
|
|
Term
| "The perfect ending should..." (William Zinsser) |
|
Definition
| "...take the reader slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right." |
|
|
Term
| "Everything that can be thought at all can be..." (Ludwig Wittgenstein) |
|
Definition
| "...thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." |
|
|
Term
| "There are no dull subjects..." (H. L. Mencken) |
|
Definition
| "...There are only dull writers." |
|
|
Term
| "Unless one is a genius..." (Anthony Hope Hawkins) |
|
Definition
| "...it is best to aim at being intelligible." |
|
|
Term
| "The ability to write clear, crisp sentences that..." (Joseph M. Williams) |
|
Definition
| "...never go beyond twenty words is a considerable achievement." |
|
|
Term
| "The longer I write, the more important I believe it is..." (Donald Murray) |
|
Definition
| "...to write the first draft as fast as possible." |
|
|
Term
| "There is no way to write..." (Walter J. Ong) |
|
Definition
| "...unless you read, and read a lot." |
|
|
Term
| "Most of my writing time is spent..." (Orhan Pamuk) |
|
Definition
| "...forming the next sentence in my imagination." |
|
|
Term
| "The skill of writing is to..." (Edwin Schlossberg) |
|
Definition
| "...create a context in which other people can think." |
|
|
Term
| "Originality is the fine art of..." (Laurence J. Peter) |
|
Definition
| "...remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it." |
|
|
Term
| "The third-rate mind is only happy when it is ______________. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is ______________. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is ______________." (A. A. Milne) |
|
Definition
thinking with the majority
thinking with the minority
thinking |
|
|
Term
| "When I write, I..." (Fran Lebowitz) |
|
Definition
| "...read everything out loud to get the right rhythm." |
|
|
Term
| "Have something to say and..." (Matthew Arnold) |
|
Definition
| "...say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret to style." |
|
|
Term
| "Read over your compositions, and..." (Samuel Johnson) |
|
Definition
| "...wherever you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." |
|
|
Term
| "Make everything..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...as simple as possible, but not simpler." |
|
|
Term
| "Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but..." (Leonard Bernstein) |
|
Definition
| "...the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time. The wait is simply too long." |
|
|
Term
| "What is written without effort..." (Samuel Johnson) |
|
Definition
| "...is in general read without pleasure." |
|
|
Term
| "You do not really understand something..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...unless you can explain it to your grandmother." |
|
|
Term
| "Not everything that can be counted..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...counts and not everything that counts can be counted." |
|
|
Term
| "It is not necessary to..." (Pierre Beaumarchais) |
|
Definition
| "...understand things in order to argue about them." |
|
|
Term
| "We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to..." (Frank Tibolt) |
|
Definition
| "...start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." |
|
|
Term
| "He can compress the most words into..." (Abraham Lincoln) |
|
Definition
| "...the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." |
|
|
Term
| "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking..." (Christopher Morley) |
|
Definition
| "...Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity." |
|
|
Term
| "The dead might as well try to..." (Willa Cather) |
|
Definition
| "..speak to the living as the old to the young." |
|
|
Term
| "It is undesirable to believe a proposition when..." (Bertrand Russell) |
|
Definition
| "...there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true." |
|
|
Term
| "The conventional view serves to..." (John Kenneth Galbraith) |
|
Definition
| "...protect us from the painful job of thinking." |
|
|
Term
| "Although we cannot all be writers..." (Martin Luther) |
|
Definition
| "...we all want to be critics." |
|
|
Term
| "Any writing requires a leap of confidence--you have to convince yourself that somebody is going to be interested in what you put down on the page--" (Calvin Trillin) |
|
Definition
| "--and believing that you know more about the subject than most of your readers do can work wonders for your confidence." |
|
|
Term
| "History will be kind to me..." (Winston Churchill) |
|
Definition
| "...for I intend to write it." |
|
|
Term
| "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing..." (Robert Benchley) |
|
Definition
| "...but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." |
|
|
Term
| "Write something, even if..." (Gore Vidal) |
|
Definition
| "...it's just a suicide note." |
|
|
Term
| "Order is..." (Pearl S. Buck) |
|
Definition
| "...the shape upon which beauty depends." |
|
|
Term
| "A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...something everybody believes, except the person who made it." |
|
|
Term
| "A writer is..." (Saul Bellow) |
|
Definition
| "...a reader moved to emulate." |
|
|
Term
| "A witty saying..." (Voltaire) |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| "Common sense is..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18." |
|
|
Term
| "Talent hits a target no one else can hit..." (Arthur Schopenhauer) |
|
Definition
| "...Genius hits a target no one else can see." |
|
|
Term
| "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, then you and I will still each have one apple..." (George Bernard Shaw) |
|
Definition
| "...But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." |
|
|
Term
| "Time flies like an arrow..." (Groucho Marx) |
|
Definition
| "...fruit flies like a banana." |
|
|
Term
| "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because..." (Max Planck) |
|
Definition
| "...in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve." |
|
|
Term
| "You begin with a subject..." (John McPhee) |
|
Definition
| "...gather material, and work your way to structure from there." |
|
|
Term
| "Only two things are infinite..." (Albert Einstein) |
|
Definition
| "...the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former." |
|
|
Term
| "When a thing is funny..." (George Bernard Shaw) |
|
Definition
| "...search it carefully for a hidden truth." |
|
|
Term
| "I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents..." (Mark Twain) |
|
Definition
| "...because I can get the same money for city." |
|
|
Term
| "I have something to say to the world..." (W. E. B. Dubois) |
|
Definition
| "...and I have taken English 12 in order to say it well." |
|
|
Term
| "What every economist, and for that matter every writer on any subject, needs to realize is that unless you are a powerful person and people are looking for clues about what you'll do next..." (Paul Krugman) |
|
Definition
| "...nobody has to read what you write--and lecturing them about what they're missing doesn't help. You have to provide the hook, the pitch, whatever you want to call it, that pulls them in. It's part of the job." |
|
|
