HERKES GİBİ – Nazım Hikmet Ran

Gönlümle baş başa düşündüm demin; 
Artık bir sihirsiz nefes gibisin. 
Şimdi tâ içinde bomboş kalbimin 
Akisleri sönen bir ses gibisin.

Mâziye karışıp sevda yeminim, 
Bir anda unuttum seni, eminim 
Kalbimde kalbine yok bile kinim 
Bence artık sen de herkes gibisin.

 

(Altıncı Kitap, Temmuz 1336/1920)

 

«BENCE SEN DE ŞİMDİ HERKES GİBİSİN» 
 

Gözlerim gözünde aşkı seçmiyor 
Onlardan kalbime sevda geçmiyor 
Ben yordum ruhumu biraz da sen yor 
Çünkü bence şimdi herkes gibisin

Yolunu beklerken daha dün gece 
Kaçıyorum bugün senden gizlice 
Kalbime baktım da işte iyice 
Anladım ki sen de herkes gibisin

Büsbütün unuttum seni eminim 
Maziye karıştı şimdi yeminim 
Kalbimde senin için yok bile kinim 
Bence sen de şimdi herkes gibisin

  
                                                    334 (1918) – Yaz – Kadıköy

KOSMOSUN KARDEŞLİĞİ ADINA

Kosmosda bizden başka düşünen var mı
var
bize benzer mi
bilmiyorum
belki bizden güzeldir
bizona benzer mesela ama çayırdan nazik
belki de akarsuyun şankına benzer
belki çirkindir bizden
karıncaya benzer mesala ama tıraktörden iri
belki de kapı gıcırtısına benzer
belki ne güzeldir bizden ne de çirkin
belki tıpatıp bize benzer
ve yıldızlardan birinde
hangisinde bilmiyorum
yıldızlardan birinde konuşacak elçimiz
hangi dilde bilmiyorum
yıldızlardan birinde konuşacak elçimiz onunla
Tovariş diyecek
söze bu sözle başlayacak biliyorum
Tovariş diyecek
ne üs kurmaya geldim yıldızına
ne petrol ne yemiş imtiyazı istemeğe
Kola-kola satacak da değilim
selamlamaya geldim seni yeryüzü umutları adına,
bedava ekmek ve bedava karanfil adına
mutlu emeklerde mutlu dinlenmeler adına
“Yarin yanağından gayrı her yerde her şeyde hep beraber”
diyebilmek adına
evlerin
yurtların
dünyaların
ve kosmosun kardeşliği adına

NAZIM HİKMET

Classic interview flubs you should avoid

Not-to-dos during an interview

Камелот

Золотой город мечты, где царят мир и гармония, впервые захватил воображение людей в средние века, когда в Европе свирепствовали войны и эпидемии. Вера в мечту, в то, что этот прекрасный город действительно существовал, подталкивала к его поискам.

Камелот? На месте замка Кэдбери, возможно, когда-то располагался Камелот -дворец короля Артура. Согласно легенде, в середине лета и на Рождество Артур и его рыцари спускались с холма напоить своих коней из близлежащего родника.

В течение восьми веков воображение человека пленялось сказочным царством короля Артура.

В центре его стоял Камелот – город-замок, обнесенный стеной с высокими башнями: там находился королевский двор и там благородный король и его рыцари жили по законам чести и рыцарской любви.

Название «Камелот» придумал французский поэт Кретьен де Труа, живший при дворе Элеоноры Акви-танской. Вдохновленный лирикой трубадуров, он ввел в легенду об Артуре тему рыцарской любви и культа прекрасной дамы. Благородный рыцарь поклоняется своей возлюбленной и посвящает ей себя и всю свою жизнь. Ради нее он совершает отважные подвиги.

Камелот Кретьена де Труа находился вне времени и пространства – в волшебной стране заколдованных лесов и замков. Отсюда рыцари отправлялись в свои странствия, чтобы, преодолев колдовские чары и вполне реальные испытания и трудности, выручить из беды прекрасную незнакомку и с победой возвратиться домой. Камелот – воплощение благородства и постоянства среди непредсказуемости окружающей действительности – символизировал превосходство цивилизации над варварством, торжество гармонии над хаосом, светлое будущее и славное прошлое человечества.

Легенда о короле Артуре получила распространение в XII веке благодаря историку Джеффри Монмутскому. В его повествовании двор Артура находился в Карлсоне в Южном Уэльсе, где когда-то располагалась римская крепость и амфитеатр. Во времена Джеффри руины этого некогда величественного города еще сохранились, поэтому неудивительно, что под его пером он превратился в легендарный Камелот. Кроме того, Карлсон лежит на реке Уск, по которой в волшебный город с островерхими золотыми крышами могли приезжать короли и королевы из дальних стран.

Однако наиболее вероятное местонахождение Камелота – замок Кэдбери в местечке Саут-Кэдбери, графство Сомерсетшир. Именно там во времена, когда, как предполагается, жил Артур, находились крупнейшие укрепления бриттов и жил король, который мог собрать самую большую армию на острове. Первым эту гипотезу выдвинул Джон Лиланд, хранитель древностей при дворе короля Генриха VIII.

Это утверждение подкрепляется и некоторыми археологическими данными – в 60-х годах во время раскопок, проводившихся в этом районе археологом Лесли Элкоком, было обнаружено, что относящийся к железному веку форт Саут-Кэдбери был заново укреплен в V веке, то есть в то время, когда вполне мог существовать король Артур. Построили форт еще в I веке до н.э., а в 83 году н.э. он был захвачен римлянами.

Еще один претендент на звание древнего Камелота -это замок Тинтаджел на северном побережье Корнуолла, где, как предполагается, и появился на свет Артур. Правда, замок стоит там только с 1145 года и по возрасту явно не дотягивает до Камелота, но раскопки показали, что на его месте когда-то был кельтский монастырь, а найденные в земле глиняные черепки свидетельствуют о том, что кто-то жил там и в V веке. Так или иначе, предполагаемая связь замка Тинтаджел с именем короля Артура до сих пор привлекает туда множество туристов.

Самое известное в наши дни повествование о короле Артуре под названием «Смерть Артура», принадлежащее перу Томаса Мэлори, появилось в 1485 году. Он считал, что Камелот находился в Винчестере по той простой причине, что с 849 по 1066 год там была столица саксов. Согласно другой версии, Артур жил на севере Британии, в королевстве под названием Далриада.

Отсутствие сколь бы то ни было определенных сведений о местонахождении Камелота, вероятнее всего, объясняется тем, что замок, подобно его хозяину, существовал лишь в воображении летописцев. Если легенда об Артуре имеет реальное основание, наиболее вероятным прототипом Камелота можно считать замок Кэдбери. Но, в принципе, так ли уж это важно – ведь истинная притягательность этого рыцарского замка прежде всего в том, что он символизирует такое место, где правят честь и отвага, где сильный защищает слабого и люди живут в мире и согласии. Очень точно выразил эту мысль английский поэт Тенниссон, написавший о Каме-лоте: «Нигде, о Господи, такого града нет, есть лишь видение, и только…»

BEN SENDEN ÖNCE ÖLMEK İSTERİM

Ben
senden önce ölmek isterim.
Gidenin arkasından gelen
gideni bulacak mı zannediyorsun?
Ben zannetmiyorum bunu.
İyisi mi,beni yaktırırsın,
odanda ocağın üstüne korsun
içinde bir kavanozun.
Kavanoz camdan olsun,
şeffaf, beyaz camdan olsun
ki içinde beni görebilesin
Fedakarlığımı anlıyorsun
vazgeçtim toprak olmaktan,
vazgeçtim çiçek olmaktan
senin yanında kalabilmek için.
Ve toz oluyorum
yaşıyorum yanında senin.
Sonra, sen de ölünce
kavanozuma gelirsin.
Ve orada beraber yaşarız
külümün içinde külün
ta ki bir savruk gelin
yahut vefasız bir torun
bizi ordan atana kadar…
Ama biz
o zamana kadar
o kadar
karışacağız
ki birbirimize,
atıldığımız çöplükte bile zerrelerimiz
yan yana düşecek.
Toprağa beraber dalacağız.
Ve bir gün yabani bir çiçek
bu toprak parçasından nemlenip filizlenirse
sapında muhakkak
iki çiçek açacak :
biri sen
biri de ben.
Ben
daha ölümü düşünmüyorum.
Ben daha bir çocuk doğuracağım
Hayat taşıyor içimden.
Kaynıyor kanım.
Yaşayacağım, ama ,çok, pek çok,
ama sen de beraber.
Ama ölüm de korkutmuyor beni.
Yalnız pek sevimsiz buluyorum
bizim cenaze şeklini.
Ben ölünceye kadar da
Bu düzelir herhalde.
Hapisten çıkmak ihtimalin var mı bugünlerde?
İçimden bir şey :
belki diyor.

 

NAZIM HİKMET

10 Psychological States You’ve Never Heard Of and When You Experienced Them

Everybody knows what you mean when you say you’re happy or sad. But what about all those emotional states you don’t have words for? Here are ten feelings you may have had, but never knew how to explain.

1. Dysphoria
Often used to describe depression in psychological disorders, dysphoria is general state of sadness that includes restlessness, lack of energy, anxiety, and vague irritation. It is the opposite of euphoria, and is different from typical sadness because it often includes a kind of jumpiness and some anger. You have probably experienced it when coming down from a stimulant like chocolate, coffee, or something stronger. Or you may have felt it in response to a distressing situation, extreme boredom, or depression.

2. Enthrallment
Psychology professor W. Gerrod Parrott has broken down human emotions into subcategories, which themselves have their own subcategories. Most of the emotions he identifies, like joy and anger, are pretty recognizable. But one subset of joy, “enthrallment,” you may not have heard of before. Unlike the perkier subcategories of joy like cheerfulness, zest, and relief, enthrallment is a state of intense rapture. It is not the same as love or lust. You might experience it when you see an incredible spectacle — a concert, a movie, a rocket taking off — that captures all your attention and elevates your mood to tremendous heights.

3. Normopathy
Psychiatric theorist Christopher Bollas invented the idea of normopathy to describe people who are so focused on blending in and conforming to social norms that it becomes a kind of mania. A person who is normotic is often unhealthily fixated on having no personality at all, and only doing exactly what is expected by society. Extreme normopathy is punctuated by breaks from the norm, where normotic person cracks under the pressure of conforming and becomes violent or does something very dangerous. Many people experience mild normopathy at different times in their lives, especially when trying to fit into a new social situation, or when trying to hide behaviors they believe other people would condemn.

4. Abjection
There are a few ways to define abjection, but French philosopher Julia Kristeva (literally) wrote the book on what it means to experience abjection. She suggests that every human goes through a period of abjection as tiny children when we first realize that our bodies are separate from our parents’ bodies — this sense of separation causes a feeling of extreme horror we carry with us throughout our lives. That feeling of abjection gets re-activated when we experience events that, however briefly, cause us to question the boundaries of our sense of self. Often, abjection is what you are feeling when you witness or experience something so horrific that it causes you to throw up. A classic example is seeing a corpse, but abjection can also be caused by seeing shit or open wounds. These visions all remind us, at some level, that our selfhood is contained in what Star Trek aliens would call “ugly bags of mostly water.” The only thing separating you from being a dead body is . . . almost nothing. When you feel the full weight of that sentence, or are confronted by its reality in the form of a corpse, your nausea is abjection.

5. Sublimation
If you’ve ever taken a class where you learned about Sigmund Freud’s theories about sex, you probably have heard of sublimation. Freud believed that human emotions were sort of like a steam engine, and sexual desire was the steam. If you blocked the steam from coming out of one valve, pressure would build up and force it out of another. Sublimation is the process of redirecting your steamy desires from having naughty sex, to doing something socially productive like writing an article about psychology or fixing the lawnmower or developing a software program. If you’ve ever gotten your frustrations out by building something, or gotten a weirdly intense pleasure from creating an art project, you’re sublimating. Other psychiatrists have refined the idea of sublimation, however. Following French theorist Jacques Lacan, they say that sublimation doesn’t have to mean converting sexual desire into another activity like building a house. It could just mean transferring sexual desire from one object to another — moving your affections from your boyfriend to your neighbor, for example.

6. Repetition compulsion
Ah, Freud. You gave us so many new feelings and psychological states to explore! The repetition compulsion is a bit more complicated than Freud’s famous definition — “the desire to return to an earlier state of things.” On the surface, a repetition compulsion is something you experience fairly often. It’s the urge to do something again and again. Maybe you feel compelled to always order the same thing at your favorite restaurant, or always take the same route home, even though there are other yummy foods and other easy ways to get home. Maybe your repetition compulsion is a bit more sinister, and you always feel the urge to date people who treat you like crap, over and over, even though you know in advance it will turn out badly (just like the last ten times). Freud was fascinated by this sinister side of the repetition compulsion, which is why he ultimately decided that the cause of our urge to repeat was directly linked to what he called “the death drive,” or the urge to cease existing. After all, he reasoned, the ultimate “earlier state of things” is a state of non-existence before we were born. With each repetition, we act out our desire to go back to a pre-living state. Maybe that’s why so many people have the urge to repeat actions that are destructive, or unproductive.

7. Repressive desublimation
Political theorist Herbert Marcuse was a big fan of Freud and lived through the social upheavals of the 1960s. He wanted to explain how societies could go through periods of social liberation, like the countercultures and revolutions of the mid-twentieth century, and yet still remain under the (often strict) control of governments and corporations. How could the U.S. have gone through all those protests in the 60s but never actually overthrown the government? The answer, he decided, was a peculiar emotional state known as “repressive desublimation.” Remember, Freud said sublimation is when you route your sexual energies into something non-sexual. But Marcuse lived during a time when people were very much routing their sexual energies into sex — it was the sexual liberation era, when free love reigned. People were desublimating. And yet they continued to be repressed by many other social strictures, coming from corporate life, the military, and the government. Marcuse suggested that desublimation can actually help to solidify repression. It acts as an escape valve for our desires so that we don’t attempt to liberate ourselves from other social restrictions. A good example of repressive desublimation is the intense partying that takes place in college. Often, people in college do a lot of drinking, drugging and hooking up — while at the same time studying very hard and trying to get ready for jobs. Instead of questioning why we have to pay tons of money to engage in rote learning and get corporate jobs, we just obey the rules and have crazy drunken sex every weekend. Repressive desublimation!

8. Aporia
You know that feeling of crazy emptiness you get when you realize that something you believed isn’t actually true? And then things feel even more weird when you realize that actually, the thing you believed might be true and might not — and you’ll never really know? That’s aporia. The term comes from ancient Greek, but is also beloved of post-structuralist theorists like Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak. The reason modern theorists love the idea of aporia is that it helps to describe the feeling people have in a world of information overload, where you are often bombarded with contradictory messages that seem equally true.

9. Compersion
We’ve gotten into some pretty philosophical territory, so now it’s time to return to some good, old-fashioned internet memes. The word compersion was popularized by people in online communites devoted to polyamory and open relationships, in order to describe the opposite of feeling jealous when your partner dates somebody else. Though a monogamous person would feel jealous seeing their partner kiss another person, a non-monogamous person could feel compersion, a sense of joy in seeing their partner happy with another person. But monogamous people can feel compersion, too, if we extend the definition out to mean any situation where you feel the opposite of jealous. If a friend wins an award you hoped to win, you can still feel compersion (though you might be a little jealous too).

10. Group feelings
Some psychologists argue that there are some feelings we can only have as members of a group — these are called intergroup and intragroup feelings. Often you notice them when they are in contradiction with your personal feelings. For example, many people feel intergroup pride and guilt for things that their countries have done, even if they weren’t born when their countries did those things. Though you did not fight in a war, and are therefore not personally responsible for what happened, you share in an intergroup feeling of pride or guilt. Group feelings often cause painful contradictions. A person may have an intragroup feeling (from one group to another) that homosexuality is morally wrong. But that person may personally have homosexual feelings. Likewise, a person may have an intragroup feeling that certain races or religions are inferior to those of their group. And yet they may personally know very honorable, good people from those races and religions whom they consider friends. A group feeling can only come about through membership in a group, and isn’t something that you would ever have on your own. But that doesn’t mean group feelings are any less powerful than personal ones.

ANAMORPHIC SCULPTURES

London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz creates ‘Anamorphic Sculptures’ which only reveal themselves once facing a reflective cylinder. Hurwitz took an engineering degree in Johannesburg where he discovered the fine line between art and science. He has lived in England for many years, working in the online industry though he quietly levitated into the world of art inspired by a need to make ‘something real’. Hurwitz discovered that he could use science as an artistic paintbrush. Each of his sculptures is a study on the physics of how we perceive space and is the stroke of over 1 billion calculations and algorithms.

18 Rules of Living by the Dalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
• “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
• “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
• “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
• “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
• “I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
• “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
• “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
• “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
• “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
• “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
• “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
• “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
• “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
• “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
• “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
• “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
• “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
• “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
• “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
• “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
• “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
• “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
• “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
• “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
• “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
• “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
• “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.”
• “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
• “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
• “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
• “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
• “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
• “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
• “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
• “Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
• “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
• “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
• “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
• “Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.”
• “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
• “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
• “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
• “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
• “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
• “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
• “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
• “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
• “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
• “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Quotes on Writing

“I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.” Henry David Thoreau
“Writing is an adventure.” Winston Churchill
“Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.” Allan Gurganus
 “… only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.” Anton Chekhov
“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening.” James Dickey
 “It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” Robert Benchley
“You ask for the distinction between the terms “Editor” and “Publisher”: an editor selects manuscripts; a publisher selects editors.” M. Lincoln Schuster
“A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.” William Sansom
“I don’t like to write, but I love to have written.” Michael Kanin
“However great a man’s natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once.” Jean Jacques Rousseau
“You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.” Robert Frost
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” Oscar Wilde
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly
“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.” Peter de Vries
“A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.” Burton Rascoe
“The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.” Ezra Pound
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” Elmore Leonard
“Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.” Lillian Helman
“I never knew what was meant by choice of words. It was one word or none.” Robert Frost
“Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them…Avoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.” Jacques Barzun

“You must write every single day of your life…You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads….may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” Ray Bradbury

“What a writer brings to any story is an attitude…” John Gregory Dunne

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” E.L. Doctorow

“The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly…Once you’ve got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three – throw them away and look for others.” Bernard Malamud

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” Jack Kerouac
“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Toni Morrison

“To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later.” Brander Matthews

“In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give to your style.” Sydney Smith

“…your reader is at least as bright as you are.” William Maxwell

“…you have to develop a conscience and if on top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you have talent without conscience, you are just one of many thousand journalists.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Whether or not you write well, write bravely.” Bill Stout

“The writer’s duty is to keep on writing…” William Styron

“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.” D.H. Lawrence

“Caress the detail, the divine detail.” Vladimir Nabokov

“Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.”
“The first draft of anything is sh*t.” Ernest Hemingway 

“Use the right word and not its second cousin.” Mark Twain

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.” Robert Penn Warren

“You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.” Doris Lessing

“A woman must have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf

“Stick to the point.” W. Somerset Maugham

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time…The wait is simply too long.” Leonard S. Bernstein

“The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.” Marcel Proust

“I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk.” Mignon Eberhart

“The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.” Arthur Schopenhauer

“Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.” E.L. Doctorow

“When genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.” D.H. Lawrence

“Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because that gives you perspective.” Ernest Hemingway

“I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next.” Laurence Sterne

“Writing a poem is discovering.” Robert Frost

“If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing a poem, it’s going to be average.” Derek Walcott

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Mark TwainV.S. Pritchett

“Write what should not be forgotten…” Isabel Allende

“Even the most productive writers are expert dawdlers…” Donald M. Murray

“Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial…a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer.” James Kisner

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.” Mark Twain

“You have typewriters, presses. And a huge audience. How about raising hell?” Jenkin Lloyd Jones

“Revise and revise and revise – the best thought will come after the printer has snatched away the copy.” Michael Morahan

“In a writer there must always be two people – the writer and the critic.” Leo Tolstoy

“Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward…” Franz Kafka
“The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to have something to say.” Arthur Schopenhauer

“Suspect all your favorite sentences.” Kenneth Atchity

“Don’t overwrite description in a story – you haven’t got time.” Elizabeth Spencer

“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Somerset Maugham

“Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.” Matthew Arnold

“…writing comes more easily if you have something to say.” Sholem Asch

“You fail only if you stop writing.” Ray Bradbury

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing….” Bernard Malamud
“Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.” Somerset Maugham

“Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer.” Julien Green

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

“…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.” H.L. Mencken

“Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory.” Chateaubriand

“You must write for yourself, above all. That is [your] only hope of creating something beautiful.” Gustave Flaubert 

“Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together.” Buffon

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.” Truman Capote

“I always do the first line well, but I have trouble with the others.” Moliere

“A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment.” William Sansom
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“You become a writer because you need to become a writer – nothing else.” Grace Paley“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” Gloria Steinem