Frederic S. > Frederic's Quotes

“grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“[Marianne Moore's definition of genuine poetry] -- Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”
― Marianne Moore

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
― Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II

“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
― Albert Einstein

“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It's the writing that teaches you.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.”
― Thomas Harris

“The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.”
― Mark Twain

“One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.”
― Igor Stravinsky

“Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all my ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.”
― Connie Willis

“You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.”
― Linus Pauling