Philip Tucker

“The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an adventure, the second is a duty. The first is like a sprint which leaves you exhausted and triumphant beside the track. With the second the writer has been transformed into a long-distance runner - the finishing tape is out of sight, at the end of life. He must guard his energies and plan ahead. A long endurance is more exhausting than a sprint, and less heroic.”
― Graham Greene, A Sort of Life

“Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Memories and Portraits

“Every year hundreds of books, many of considerable merit, pass unnoticed. Each one has taken the author months to write, he may have had it in his mind for years; he has put into it something of himself which is lost forever, it is heart-rending to think how great are the chances that it will be disregarded.”
― Maugham W. Somerset, (Willia 1874-1965

“The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history.”
― Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail?