Quotes of the Week

Tales from the Loop

You are what you settle for.
—Janis Joplin

Writers feel the grammar rather than knowing it. This comes from good reading. If you read enough, the grammar will come.
—Colum McCann

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time.
—William Zinsser

Inspect your “hads” and see if you really need them.
—Martin Amis

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
—Beatrix Potter

I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent.
—James M. Cain

Drama is life with the dull parts cut out.
—Alfred Hitchcock

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
—Aldous Huxley

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.
—Robert Graves

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write.
—Anaïs Nin

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.
—Arthur Miller