Writing Life Quotes - Page 5

• Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Cat, Simple

  "Mark Twain’s Book of Animals".

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• The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.

  Dani Shapiro

  Writing, Persistence, Empathy

  Dani Shapiro (2013). “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

  Gore Vidal

  Thinking, Race, America

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can't, you're dead.

  Warren Adler

  Art, Writing, Rejection

  Twitter post from Feb 21, 2014

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