Quotes of the Way

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
—William Faulkner

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
—Dr. Seuss

I think most writers, even the best, overwrite. I prefer to underwrite. Simple, clear as a country creek.
—Truman Capote

Without tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
—Robert Frost

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
—Ernest Hemingway

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
—Leonard Cohen

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself.
—Anna Deavere Smith

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
—Charles Mingus

There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
—Flannery O’Connor

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of suprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.
—H.G. Wells