Favorite Quotations On Writing

Writers, unsurprisingly, come up with the best quotes.

Some of my favorites:

“I hate writing; I love having written.” –Dorothy Parker

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking ….” –Joan Didion

“I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.” –Stephen King

"’The cat sat on the mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog's mat’ is a story.” –John le Carré

“Most grown-up behavior, when you come right down to it, is decidedly second-class. People don’t drive their cars as well, or wash their ears as well, or eat as well, or even play the harmonica as well as they would if they had any sense …[F]or the serious young writer who wants to get published, it is encouraging to know that most of the professional writers out there are push-overs.” –John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

What quotes about writing do you like?

Who Said That?

I am a sucker for a good quote.

Like “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Which I use all the time.

But quotes can be tricky.

Take “Done is better than perfect.” When I first heard it, it was attributed to Mark Zuckerberg, but it has also been attributed to Sheryl Sandburg.

Does it matter? Well, sort of.

Here’s another favorite: "If someone’s nice to you but rude to the waiter, they’re not nice." I first heard it when a CEO named William Swanson wrote a book of advice for fellow managers. Turns out, however, that he had plagiarized the whole book. He stole this particular quote from Dave Barry.

And sometimes a quote isn’t real at all.

Pope Francis never said “All religions are true.” Nor did he say, “It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person … Some of the best people in history do not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name.”

He didn’t even ever tell a grieving boy that his dead dog would go to heaven, though, yay!, another Pope, Pope Paul VI, did say something like that.

OK, so I’d like to know that it has actually been said, but maybe who said it doesn’t matter.

Another I saw on Facebook, “If you have more than you need, it's better to build a longer table than a taller fence,” comes from someone’s friend, who is trying to become a life coach.

I came up with my own once: “A little every day gets the job done.” I use it to remind myself to do something, anything, no matter how small, every day on a project.

It works, like when you decide to keep a blog.

Just saying.