“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside of us.” — Franz Kafka
“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”
— Peter deVries
“[N]early all books on nearly all subjects ... are much too long.”
— P.B. Medawar, The Limits of Science (preface)
“Journalism at best only approximates reality, because writers must inevitably select and
compress.”
— William A. Henry III, in Time, 21 August 1989, p. 49 (“The Right to Fake Quotes:
A Journalist's Legal Victory Raises Questions About Ethics”). (One might say the same
about all writing.)
“Perhaps nothing is so painful as rejection, and nothing so sweet, especially to an author,
as wrongful rejection overruled by history.”
— Author unknown, The New York Times Book Review, 18 March 1990.
“Clean, precise writing or speaking requires systematic, sequential thought. Words have to be
crafted, not sprayed.”
— Norman Cousins, “The Communication Collapse,” Time essay, submitted shortly before his death
at the age of 75.
“All honest thought is a form of prayer.”
— Lance Morrow, “The Best Refuge for Insomniacs,” Time essay, 29 April 1991, page 82.
“To suggest that extramarital affairs reflect women’s sexual needs is like saying that the ...
Los Angeles riots reflect[ed] the desire of poor people to possess television sets.
It may be true – but what a tiny piece of the truth it is.”
— Jill Smolowe, “Revenge of Donna Reed” (review of The Erotic Silence of the American Wife
by Dalma Heyn), Time, 22 June 1992.
“Any addition to the truth is a subtraction from it.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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