Wise Words

Thoughts on writing from authors born January 3:

from Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (In Catilinam, Ad Atticum, Ad familiares, Ad Brutum, Ad Quintum fratrem, De consulata suo, De oratore, De republica, Tusculanae Disputationes, De natura deorum, De Officiis) (106 B.C.E.-43 B.C.E.):

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

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from American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Gould Fletcher (Selected Poems); also noted for Irradiations: Sand and Spray, Goblins and Pagodas (1886-1950):

Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of suffering, decay and death.

Poetry merely descriptive of nature, however vivid, no longer seems enough for me, there has to be added to it, the human judgement, the human evaluation.

It is time to create something new. It is time to strip poetry of meaningless tatters of form, and to clothe her in new, suitable garments.

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from English academic and writer J. R. R. Tolkien CBE (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Tolkien Reader) (1892-1973):

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited "first chapters." I have indeed written many.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I dislike Allegory—the conscious and intentional allegory—yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.

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from American-British poet and scholar Anne Stevenson (Living in America: Poems, Reversals, Travelling Behind Glass, Minute by Glass Minute, Selected Poems, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath) (1933-2020):

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings—about human feelings and frailties.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

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from Cuban children's author Alma Flor Ada (Under the Royal Palms, The Gold Coin, Gathering the Sun) (b. 1938):

The topics that keep repeating, whether the characters be animals, people or even geometric shapes are the joy of family, the surprises of discovering friendship among those who apparently are different from us, our capacity to change our environment and thus our life for the better, and the power in not-giving up.

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from British children’s author Terry Deary (Horrible Histories series, Master Crook's Crime Academy series) (b. 1946):

I'm not a historian, and I wouldn't want to be. I want to change the world. Attack the elite. Overturn the hierarchy. Look at my stories and you'll notice that the villains are always, always, those in power. The heroes are the little people. I hate the establishment. Always have, always will.