Hired Wrist
Words of wisdom
Benjamin Disraeli
The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.
Charles de Montesquieu
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
Molière
Writing is like prostitution. First one writes for the love of doing it, then for a few friends, and, in the end, for the money.
Gerald Ochs Davis, Jr.
One day God decided he would visit the earth. Strolling down the road, God encountered a sobbing man. "Why are you crying, my son?"
The man said, "God, I am blind." So God touched him and the man could see and was happy.
As God walked farther he met another crying man and asked, "Why are you crying, my son?"
The man said, "God, I am crippled." So God touched him and the man could walk and he was happy.
Farther down the road God met yet a third man crying and asked, "Why are you crying, my son?"
The man said, "God, I'm a writer."
And God sat down and cried with him.
Hunter S. Thompson
"The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
Fred Allen
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
Lillian Hellman
"Writers write"
Chico Marx
"I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth."
Ernest Hemingway
"All writing is rewriting."
Linda Obst
"Hello," he lied.
Alfred Hitchcock
"Movies are like real life with the boring parts taken out."
Harry Cohen
"You call that a script? Gimme a couple a $5000-a-week writers and I'll do it myself."
Anonymous
A writer knocked on the Pearly Gates, his face was worn and old,
He stood before the man of fate for admission to the fold.
"What have you done," St. Peter asked, "to gain admission here?"
"I've been a TV writer, sir," he said, "for many
and many a year."
The Pearly Gates swung open wide, St. Peter touched the bell,
"Come in," he said, "and choose your harp, you've
had your taste of Hell."
Frank Conroy
Upon retiring, after twenty years, as head of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop:
"You have to get across to them that the work is separate from them. That's
what good work is: a life independent of the life of the author. So you have unintended
qualities in your prose—personal tics, pretending to write, instead of really
writing. All writers have to go through this and get it past them. I try to make
that quicker for them rather than longer."
