Chief Keef on Writing
“I’m ’bout to go in, like, two seconds.”
“I don’t really use metaphors or punchlines, ’cause I don’t have to. I’d rather just say what’s going on right now. Real talk.”
“Please don’t write no fuck-shit.”
“It’s like candy, eating candy, a lot of candy. Or something.”
“Haters is fans. Like Louie said, ‘Let’em talk: it’s advertising.'”
“Keep working. I worked for a long time. Instead of saying I want to grow up to be a police officer, I want to grow up to be a firefighter, I want to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer—I made this a goal.”
“I don’t know who to listen to.” READ MORE >
“My mis-shapen head cracks through all the clichés.” – Jules Renard, on Writing
Years before Twitter and Robert Walser, Renard maximized the miniature. These are all from The Journal of Jules Renard, which Tin House reprinted in 2008, written between 1887 & 1910.
“You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.”
“Make Believe That You Got a Free Throw”: Red Auerbach on Writing
Do what is best for you.
Relax. Follow through. But make it.
Aleister Crowley on Writing
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
“I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.”
“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”
“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?”
“There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: ‘More money for more work.’”
“Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.”
“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”
“With the Dagger destroyeth He.”
Harry Houdini on Writing
“No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.”
“My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business.”
“Only one man ever betrayed my confidence, and that only in a minor matter.”
“The great day of the Fire-eater–or, should I say, the day of the great Fire-eater–has passed.”
“It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.”