Writing

Great Moments in Literature: In 1936, Ernest Hemingway, while trout fishing, caught a carp and decided not to write about it.
-- Guindon cartoon caption

He was a multi-millionaire. Wanna know how he made all of his money? He designed the little diagrams that tell which way to put batteries in.
-- Steven Wright

Documentation is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still better than nothing!
-- Unknown

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
-- Francis Bacon

[about writing projects:]
There must have been a time, probably somewhere near the beginning, when we could have said 'no.'
-- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

An alarming new study shows that 14 percent of Americans do not speak English, and the vast majority of them write computer manuals."
-- Dave Barry

Updating a manual is like changing tires on a moving car.
-- Edmond Weiss

A modern US Navy cruiser now requires 26 tons of manuals. This is enough to affect the vessel's performance.
-- David Mankins

How do I know what I said until I read what I wrote?
-- Unknown

All writing is garbage.
-- Antonin Artaud

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.
-- Steven Wright

I wrote a few children's books...not on purpose.
-- Steven Wright

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.
-- Steven Wright

Writing . . . identifies objects encountered in the dark.
-- Sharon Samuels

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The publishing world has long been viewed by the general public as one inhabited by gentle, professional types--an ivory tower. It's perhaps in reaction to this oversimplified conception that people in publishing have, over the years, developed a professional jargon of peculiarly violent cast.
One begins with relatively harmless maritime images--of galleys and mastheads, of rivers and casting off--but before long one encounters broadsides, sinkage, and widows.
Back on shore there are dummies and nuts running around, armed with bullets and slugs, and other inferior characters (some with bastard titles) on the skids and running ragged in the gutters. There are line cuts and bleeds, cropping and blind stamping. Operative terms in this world include kill, delete, and blow up. Chase leads to crash and lockup, and then inexorably to hanging heads and dead matter. For the doubtful, there is foul proof. But for the truly fortunate, there is perfect binding.
-- Success with words: A guide to the American language, the introduction to the publishing glossary

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.
-- D.H. Lawrence

I can't tell you what it is....but I want you to write about it.
-- Unknown manager

If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.
-- John Benbow

Tpyo? What Tpyo?
-- Kea d'Albenas

Anyone should be very suspicious of a sentence he's written that can't be real aloud easily.
-- Andy Rooney

Truth does not stick to glossy paper.
-- William Horton

Writing is like prostitution: First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money.
-- F. Molnar

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
-- Julian Barnes