Re: favorite quotes (LONG)

[Rose Wilcox <RWILC -at- FAST -dot- DOT -dot- STATE -dot- AZ -dot- US>]

Techwhirlers:
As some of you know, I am a quote aficionada and so I, not without qualms, I
am replying to this thread with a quite long selection of quotes from my
files.  I apologize if this list is too long; it's for quote lovers only.
 It is organized arbitrarily by writing-related topics.

Thank you for your kind indulgence.

Rose "the Quotemeister" Wilcox
rwilc -at- fast -dot- dot -dot- state -dot- az -dot- us
ncrowe -at- primenet -dot- com

****ACCURACY****
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
specific."
 --Jane Wagner

"Although our information is incorrect, we do not vouch for it."
 -- Erik Alfred Leslie Satie

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
 -- Mark Twain

****AUDIENCE****

"Your audience is one single reader.  I have found that sometimes it helps
to pick out one person -- a real person you know, or an imagined person and
write to that one."
 -- John Steinbeck

****BOOKS****

"...As it is, some books, nearly perfect, are known to become transparent
when opened under the influence of the proper constellation, when the full
Moon rests in place.  Then it is not uncommon for a man to become lost in a
single letter, or to hear a voice rise up from the silent page; and then
only one imperfect letter, one missing page, can bring him back to the
land..."
 -- Howard Schwartz

"...By necessity every book must have at least one flaw; a misprint, a
missing page, one imperfection..."
 -- Howard Schwartz

****BOSSES****

"Whistler's Law:
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge."

****CRITICISM****

"Show yourself more human than critical and your pleasure will increase."
 -- Domenico Scarletti

****CRAFT****

"Craft is perfected attention."
 -- Robert Kelly

****EDITING****

"Writing is easy.  All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."
 -- Mark Twain

"As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out."
 -- Mark Twain

"Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor
will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
 - Mark Twain

"I write a lot-- every day, seven days a week-- and I throw a lot away.
Sometimes I think I write to throw away; it's a process of distillation."
 -- Donald Barthelme

****EFFORT****

"One hundred percent of the shots you don't take don't go in."
 -- Wayne Gretzky

****EXPERIMENTATION****

"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results.  I know several thousand
things that won't work."
 -- Thomas A. Edison

****GRAMMAR****

"In all other writing, I refuse to kowtow to the perverse beliefs of dead
poets."
 -- Steve Fouts

 ;-) Does anyone recognize this one? (Quoted with permission.)

****MISC.****

"Life's been nothing but paperwork."
 - Gustav Mahler

"Never put pen to paper!"
 -- Lady Ida Sitwell

"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
 -- Robert Benchley

****MODEL****

"A good conceptual model allows us to predict the effects of our actions.
 Without a good model we operate by rote, blindly; we do operations as we
were told to do them; we can't fully appreciate why, what effects to expect,
or what to do if things go wrong.  As long as things work properly, we can
manage.  When things go wrong, however, or when we come upon a novel
situation, then we need ... a good model."
 -- Don A. Norman

****PERSEVERANCE****

"The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get."
Satchel Paige

"When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace."
J. Lubbock

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
 -Japanese proverb

"Don't bother about genius.  Don't worry about being clever.  Place  your
trust in hard work, perseverance, and determination."
 -- Sir Frederick Treves

****QUALITY****

"People forget how fast you did a job -- they remember how well you did it."
 -- Howard W. Newton

****PREPARATION****

"Chance favors the prepared mind."
 -- Louis Pasteur

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
 -- Elmer Letterman

****SIMPLICITY/BREVITY****

"Anything simple always interests me."
 -- David Hokney

"The shorter and plainer the better."
 -- Beatrix Potter

"Brevity is the soul of wit."
 -- William Shakespeare

"Be obscure clearly."
 -- EB White

"'Well,' said Owl, 'the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.'
'What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?' said Pooh.  'For I am a Bear of
Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.'
'It means the Thing to Do.'
'As long as it means that, I don't mind,' said Pooh humbly."
 --AA Milne

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
 -- Occum

****WRITING****

"I know everything.  One has to, to write decently."
Henry James

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact
man,"
 - Francis Bacon

"It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and
very little harm comes to them."
 -- Julian Barnes

****WORDS****

"By its very nature a word is an instrument of paradox."
 -- Oswald Wirth

"Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all."
 -- Winston Churchill

****WORK****

"Work keeps us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need."
 -- Voltaire

"Dreams are the stuff that make life worth living. Give them up, and you
give up all that truly matters. Write for yourself, not for recognition or
success. If those fruits are to come, they will come. But the work itself
must be the primary and major satisfaction."
 -- William Heffernan

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but
what they become by it."
 -- John Ruskin

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as
Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote
poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and
earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job
well."
 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.