Many get inspiration from the words of those who have come before us. I know I do! So this month instead of my ramblings (you all know you love me!), I thought I'd share some other writers' and authors' words on writing, imagination, literature, and life in general.

I know I lean on others' words for thoughts (and steal their quotes for the front of my columns). I do hope that some of these quotes inspire you as they do me...and If not, you still have me next month to banter about the craft of writing again. Enjoy !

 A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men. 
- Willie Wonka in Roald Dahl's, Charlie and the Chocolate  Factory

Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein. 
                   -Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

 There is no perfect time to write. There's only now.
                    - Barbara Kingsolver in Writer's Digest

 Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
                   -Ben Franklin (1706)

Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
                   - Erica Jong in The Writer on Her Work

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
                   - Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
                   - Gilda Radner

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
                   -Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet"

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
                   - Joseph Addison

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.
                   - Samuel Johnson

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success --- but only if you persist.
                   - Isaac Asimov

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
                   - Cyril Connolly

The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.
                   - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.
                   - Thomas Carlyle

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
                   -Stephen King

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.
                   -Sylvia Plath

We want competence, but competence itself is deadly. What you want is vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class. 
                   -Flannery O'Connor

At my first literary luncheon, a woman asked me with absolute sincerity, 'How does it feel to have written your best book first?'
                   -Amy Tan

Books, if you don't put them first, tend to sulk. They retreat into a corner and refuse to work.
                   -Salman Rushdie

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music --- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
                   - Henry Miller

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die --- whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
                   - Gilda Radner

Writing is a socially accepted form of schizophrenia.
                   - E.L. Doctorow in Writers at Work

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.
                   - William Wirt

Melville was not ready to write Moby Dick until he was five novels into his career.
                   - Tom Clark

My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.
                   - Abraham Lincoln

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
                   - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The only reason to write a first novel is if you absolutely can not. 
                   - Claire M. Smith, literary agent

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those who move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
                   - Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism" (1711)

(This one is for my brother the accountant!) Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
                   - Herman Wouk

Keep reaching for the stars.
                   -Bennet Pomerantz (Ok, I wanted to see how it looked!)

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About the Writer:

Bennet Pomerantz is a media review columnist in 175 newspapers with his weekly column AUDIOWORLD. His fiction and reviews have appeared in the pages of Affaire De Coeur, Gateways, Mystery Scene, Power Star, The Hot Corner, Washington Entertainment Magazine, and many others. He is also known for his review appearances on the MCN Forum. View his web site at Audioworld.