James Keough > James's Quotes

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”
― William Faulkner

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
― William Faulkner

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”
― William Faulkner

“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. ”
― William Faulkner

“It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.”
― William Faulkner

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“It's History that's caused all the troubles in the past.”
― Michael Moorcock

“The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.”
― Michael Moorcock

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”

[Roark] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
― Ayn Rand

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?"

I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?"

To shrug.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
― William Faulkner

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
― William Faulkner, The Wild Palms

“Wonder. Go on and wonder.”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

“Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.”
― William Faulkner

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.”
― William Faulkner

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”
― William Faulkner

“You can't. You just have to.”
― William Faulkner