On Writing

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
-Gene Fowler

There is something pleasurable in calm remembrance of past sorrow.
-Cicero

Literature: proclaiming in front of everyone what one is careful to conceal from one's immediate circle.
-Jean Rostand

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
-Thomas Mann

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
-Franklin P. Adams

Talking about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.
-Oscar Wilde

No artist is pleased...
There is only a queer satisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
-Martha Graham

(from Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit & Wisdom From History's Greatest Wordsmiths by Mardy Grothe)