Writing quotes

[Bramblethorn]

"A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave."

Anybody know where Wilde might have said this? I've seen a lot of people attributing this quote to him, but nobody ever mentions a source, and I don't recall ever reading it in his works.

(I like it, regardless of who said it, but I'm fussy about attribution and there are a lot of made-up Wilde quotes out there.)

 

[lovecraft68]

Neil Gaiman

 

[oggbashan]

Anybody know where Wilde might have said this? I've seen a lot of people attributing this quote to him, but nobody ever mentions a source, and I don't recall ever reading it in his works.

(I like it, regardless of who said it, but I'm fussy about attribution and there are a lot of made-up Wilde quotes out there.)

I've tried checking. It appears multiple times but so far I haven't found a source. But in 2013 an 1890 Oscar Wilde letter about writing was sold at auction. The contents of that letter haven't been released publicly.

I have also checked my many old books of quotations. That quote doesn't appear in any of them attributed to Wilde or not.

 

[Captainnumnuts]

Anybody know where Wilde might have said this? I've seen a lot of people attributing this quote to him, but nobody ever mentions a source, and I don't recall ever reading it in his works.

(I like it, regardless of who said it, but I'm fussy about attribution and there are a lot of made-up Wilde quotes out there.)

Not sure. I see it all over attributed to Ocasr Wilde. Some of my favs don't come from well known authors.

You might like this one: "My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier." - Anthony Hopkins

 

[lovecraft68]

I find this one very fitting for here in regards to the endless threads of 'will people like this" 'what do people like here' 'what story should I write"

 

[JasonClearwater]

I find this one very fitting for here in regards to the endless threads of 'will people like this" 'what do people like here' 'what story should I write"

Spoken like someone with a day job.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

"Write drunk, edit sober."

- Hemingway

Glad I keep absinthe handy...

 

[Oblimo]

POETA FIT, NON NASCITUR
by Lewis Carroll

"How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once 'the very wish
Partook of the sublime.'
Then tell me how! Don't put me off
With your 'another time'!"

The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically;
And thought "There's no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally."

"And would you be a poet
Before you've been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic -
A very simple rule.

"For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.

'Then, if you'd be impressive,
Remember what I say,
That abstract qualities begin
With capitals alway:
The True, the Good, the Beautiful -
Those are the things that pay!

"Next, when you are describing
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
With a sort of mental squint."

"For instance, if I wished, Sir,
Of mutton-pies to tell,
Should I say 'dreams of fleecy flocks
Pent in a wheaten cell'?"
"Why, yes," the old man said: "that phrase
Would answer very well.

"Then fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word -
As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird -
Of these, 'wild,' 'lonely,' 'weary,' 'strange,'
Are much to be preferred."

"And will it do, O will it do
To take them in a lump -
As 'the wild man went his weary way
To a strange and lonely pump'?"
"Nay, nay! You must not hastily
To such conclusions jump.

"Such epithets, like pepper,
Give zest to what you write;
And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite:
But if you lay them on too thick,
You spoil the matter quite!

"Last, as to the arrangement:
Your reader, you should show him,
Must take what information he
Can get, and look for no im-
mature disclosure of the drift
And purpose of your poem.

"Therefore, to test his patience -
How much he can endure -
Mention no places, names, or dates,
And evermore be sure
Throughout the poem to be found
Consistently obscure.

"First fix upon the limit
To which it shall extend:
Then fill it up with 'Padding'
(Beg some of any friend):
Your great SENSATION-STANZA
You place towards the end."

"And what is a Sensation,
Grandfather, tell me, pray?
I think I never heard the word
So used before to-day:
Be kind enough to mention one
'EXEMPLI GRATIA.'"

And the old man, looking sadly
Across the garden-lawn,
Where here and there a dew-drop
Yet glittered in the dawn,
Said "Go to the Adelphi,
And see the 'Colleen Bawn.'

'The word is due to Boucicault -
The theory is his,
Where Life becomes a Spasm,
And History a Whiz:
If that is not Sensation,
I don't know what it is.

"Now try your hand, ere Fancy
Have lost its present glow - "
"And then," his grandson added,
"We'll publish it, you know:
Green cloth - gold-lettered at the back -
In duodecimo!"

Then proudly smiled that old man
To see the eager lad
Rush madly for his pen and ink
And for his blotting-pad -
But, when he thought of PUBLISHING,
His face grew stern and sad.

 

[clistenovena]

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe." ~Gustave Flaubert

Found the truth of this yet again.

 

[lovecraft68]

Spoken like someone with a day job.

No, spoken like someone who'd rather write edgy for a limited audience then sell out to appease the 50 shades of grey herd.

The day job enables being able to do that because we don't have to worry about every dime and sale.

Some people say they don't care if they hit, unless they hit with 'their' writing. Most don't mean it. I do.

 

[JasonClearwater]

No, spoken like someone who'd rather write edgy for a limited audience then sell out to appease the 50 shades of grey herd.

The day job enables being able to do that because we don't have to worry about every dime and sale.

Some people say they don't care if they hit, unless they hit with 'their' writing. Most don't mean it. I do.

I was referring to the person who wrote the quote, not you.

I know you have integrity. No one will ever call your writing 50 shades of anything, other than utterly terrifying.

 

[lovecraft68]

I was referring to the person who wrote the quote, not you.

I know you have integrity. No one will ever call your writing 50 shades of anything, other than utterly terrifying.

Here's the person the quote is attributed to. No surprise I never heard of him...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Connolly

I don't know that I have integrity, its more like Fuck you if you don't like it

 

[JasonClearwater]

Here's the person the quote is attributed to. No surprise I never heard of him...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Connolly

I don't know that I have integrity, its more like Fuck you if you don't like it

Connolly left Balliol in 1925 with a third class degree in history. He struggled to find employment, while his friends and family sought to pay off his extensive debts.

I want friends and family like this guy!

 

[lovecraft68]

Connolly left Balliol in 1925 with a third class degree in history. He struggled to find employment, while his friends and family sought to pay off his extensive debts.

I want friends and family like this guy!

Those are called psychic vampires and everyone has them

 

[KindofHere]

..............

 

[lovecraft68]

"That wasn't my idea, but I can't wait to use it." Unspoken thoughts by every creative soul.

It's what most people think before they hear the quote , "Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal," by T.S. Elliot and other authors, painters, idea people who've repurosed that saying.

I think stealing is taking an idea outright without change. Borrowing is taking the idea and putting your ideas into it. a spin so to speak.

 

[KindofHere]

...............

 

[49greg]

OK (frustrated historian speaking...) this is fun! I had always heard it attributed to Churchill, but have done some digging.

Winstonchurchill.org (https://www.winstonchurchill.org/?s="a+shorter+letter") doesn’t mention it in their list of Churchillian quotes, so I went to Quote Investigator (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/) . To my surprise, although they produced a quote with the same general thesis from Mark Twain, it wasn’t anything near the same format or nearly as pithy:

You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.​

Quote Investigators, on the other hand, attributes different but much closer versions to:

Blaise Pascall, 1657: I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter. (translation from the French)

Ben Franklin, 1750: I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.

Henry David Thoreau, 1857: Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

​

And others. (All Quote Investigators attributions, BTW, are given with references.

So, bottom line, probably neither Twain nor Churchill. (Pity, as I admire both of them a lot.) It may well be one of those universal truths that great people come upon independently, like both Newton and Leibniz with calculus.

My comment isn't about writing but speechifying. It's by Isaac Asimov about the prep time for speeches. It's similar to the above quotes about writing.

"If I Am To Speak Ten Minutes, I Need a Week for Preparation; If an Hour, I Am Ready Now"

I had a vague memory and found the quote in 'Quote Investigator".

 

[Oblimo]

Speaking of stealing... anecdote time!

In the movie Babe, there’s this wonderful line that I’ve seen many writers and reviewers go ga-ga over:

The pig and the farmer regarded each other.

I’ve seen it stolen. A lot. Hell, I’ve stolen it (The geek and the green girl regarded each other ). Here’s one of my favorites:

The writer and the gunslinger regarded each other.

King has done some smartassery when stealing. Example: In Lisey’s Story, in a sequence that is a blatant ripoff of Slaughter House 5’s “unstuck in time” narrative gimmick, there’s a God-damned copy of Slaughter House 5 on the main character’s nightstand.

 

[lovecraft68]

That's how I see it.

I think quotes like that are put bluntly to drive the point that you're going to use other peoples ideas and it's okay, everybody does it. It's not to be taken literally, some understanding of theft vs. inspiration has to be understood.

One of my favorite fantasy series of all time is completely stolen from dozens of works, a little 'too inspired by' in some cases, one scene almost word for word from an old move called Zulu. I never finished the series, took too long between books at the end, but it was still good when the writer was rewriting other people's ideas. It was boring when he wrote his own (I couldn't find parallels to any significant work during those chapters), he should have stolen more.

You saws Zulu? You're the only other person I've ever encountered that has. Movie was fantastic.

The closest I've come to stealing was after watching the first season of True Detective and thinking what a piece of garbage Woody Harrelson's character was

For those who didn't see it, picture the stereotype of a D-bag cop. Drinks too much, fucks anything that moves, abuses his powers and despite being a cheat had the nerve to be jealous of anyone who looked at his wife.

he embodied everything I hate in a man and at the time I'd started a serial killer novel and decided to make 'Josh Wilson" that type of all around dick head. But in that case the character on the show was pretty much already an amalgam of all the bad a man can be so I just went with the same trope.

 

[SimonDoom]

You saws Zulu? You're the only other person I've ever encountered that has. Movie was fantastic.

The closest I've come to stealing was after watching the first season of True Detective and thinking what a piece of garbage Woody Harrelson's character was

For those who didn't see it, picture the stereotype of a D-bag cop. Drinks too much, fucks anything that moves, abuses his powers and despite being a cheat had the nerve to be jealous of anyone who looked at his wife.

he embodied everything I hate in a man and at the time I'd started a serial killer novel and decided to make 'Josh Wilson" that type of all around dick head. But in that case the character on the show was pretty much already an amalgam of all the bad a man can be so I just went with the same trope.

Zulu was a very good movie. Michael Caine's first major role, I think, and he was fun to watch. The battle scenes were suspenseful and well done. The movie was ahead of its time in realism.

Woody Harrelson plays lots of assholes, but he's good at it, I think. I started watching that show but haven't gotten far enough in to see the stuff you 're talking about.

 

[lovecraft68]

Zulu was a very good movie. Michael Caine's first major role, I think, and he was fun to watch. The battle scenes were suspenseful and well done. The movie was ahead of its time in realism.

Woody Harrelson plays lots of assholes, but he's good at it, I think. I started watching that show but haven't gotten far enough in to see the stuff you 're talking about.

Whatever you do stick to season one. Season two is a new cast and they are horrible.

If I'm not mistaken he's cheating on the wife in episode one with the intern. Maybe our opinions vary on what makes an asshole. But he'll earn it for you, trust me.

 

[KindofHere]

................

 

[lovecraft68]

Yeah, I downloaded some years ago, I forget why, but there is a scene where this South African (I think) white guy describes how the Zulu fight, and at the end he stabs the ground with a bayonet, and I thought, "I've read that before" and it made me look at the series 'A Wheel of Time' and I started seeing parallels to EVERYTHING ever written. Still a great series, but not one idea was original.




I read the guy who wrote True Detective is no stranger to plagiarism (borrowing is obvious and accepted) but the other: https://lovecraftzine.com/2014/08/0...tective-plagiarize-thomas-ligotti-and-others/

Edit: that link has your name, complete coincidence.



I thought the cast (except for the Swingers guy) was fine, it was the material that was bad and uninteresting.

Back to Topic
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

Vince Vaughn can ruin anything that's not a brain cell losing comedy.

The Lovecraft(the real Lovecraft, not me) article is referring to the things borrowed from the Lovecraftian universe. the biggest of which was the Yellow King a mythical play created by Robert Chambers about Carcosa and Hastur a bootleg great old one.

Lovecraft openly invited people to use his mythos but always wanted them to add to it by creating another old one of legendary occult tome so these guys aren't taking it into account that HPL enjoyed people using and expanding his work.

One thing I'll always remember about True detective is when Woody's wife finds out he's cheating yet again she goes to McConaughey's house and fucks him, but it was a quickie over the table and she leaves.

My wife says "That's it? That d-bag fucks around on you and you go to this hot guy and you only stay for a quickie? I'd have fucked and sucked him all night.

I made a note to myself that I better not cheat.

 

[ThatsTheGuy]

Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung. - Captain Ahab.