Literary Quotations

• Never open your book with weather - Elmore Leonard
• Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke - F Scott Fitzgerald
• Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators - Albert Camus
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out - George Orwell (who really could have cut two words out of this statement.)
• If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talk about writing or themselves - Lillian Hellman
• This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl - Dylan Thomas on At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
• Proust changed my life with books one, two and three. I'll read more of Moby Dick, but three Proust books may have to suffice - Jonathan Franzen
• I don't fire up the prose, I just tell it straight and don't fool around with it - Raymond Carver
• Just remember how many writers down the ages have written to entertain, and who remembers them now? - Miguel Angel Asturias
• You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then get somebody to add commas, maybe fix the spelling. They have people who do that - Elmore Leonard