Literary Bits for September 15

Thoughts on writing from authors born September 15:

from epigrammatist Francois de La Rochefoucauld (Mémoires, Maximes) (1613-1680):

True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

 

from novelist James Fenimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans) (1789-1851):

The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

 

from humorist Robert Benchley (The New Yorker, How to Sleep) (1889-1945):

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

 

from writer and poet Claude McKay (Songs of Jamaica, Home to Harlem) (1889-1948):

I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools.

 

from mystery writer Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Mousetrap) (1890-1976):

There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me in keeping to the point. Economy of wording, I think, is particularly necessary in detective stories. You don't want to hear the same thing rehashed three or four times over.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

 

from writer-director Jean Renoir (La Grande Illusion, La Règle du jeu) (1894-1979):

A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.

 

from columnist Sheilah Graham (“Hollywood Today,” Beloved Infidel) 1904-1988):

I sometimes mistake my typewriter for my teeth, because the more I bite the more my column will be read.

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.

 

from fiction and non-fiction author Adolfo Bioy Casares (La invención de Morel, Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi) (1914-1999):

Sometimes I think Johnson's Lives of the English Poets is all I need to be happy.

 

from biographer Fawn M. Brodie (Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, No Man Knows My History) (1915-1981):

Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with suspense.

 

from historian John Julius Norwich (A History of Venice, A Short History of Byzantium) (1929-2018):

All forms of literature are dangerous; but in none is the danger more acute than in historical fiction...

 

from writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola (Strega Nona, 26 Fairmount Avenue) (1934-2020):

Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything.

 

from pastoralist Sara Henderson (From Strength to Strength) (1936-2005):

Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself.

 

from science fiction writer Howard Waldrop (Them Bones, Howard Who?) (b. 1946):

H.P. Lovecraft is for the summer between junior and senior years in high school. Cosmic fear hits you about then anyway—you realize you'll soon have to Get a Real Job or Go To College or Both and in those days, Be Drafted. A dose of Cthulhu helps put these feelings in perspective.

 

from rapper and essayist George Watsky (Cardboard Castles, How to Ruin Everything) (b. 1986):

My heart is a colored pencil but my brain is an eraser.

You might think that you're ruined. You might think you're defeated. If you love what you're doing you've already succeeded.