American Editor Quotes

Aggression, the writer's main source of energy.

It often puzzles me when people think that matters connected with sex ought to be suppressed. Sex itself cannot be suppressed, and the efforts to do it, it seems to me, result in greater damage than it can do itself. After all, it was not an invention of man, but of God.

Maxwell Perkins

There are true unseen forces, but not nearly so many as we believe, nor would they rule us so sternly if we did not admit them to our souls. We would not be assailed half so often by devils, had we not taken the trouble to invent so many of them.

Robert Silverberg

The balance and peace we seek for ourselves and our society won't be achieved through mental effort alone. Mind and spirit are meant to travel together, with spirit leading the way. Until we make a conscious commitment to understand and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living without the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.

Susan L. Taylor

We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried, "Behold the butterfly, the see that's cast!" Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast! What man can look on Death unterrified?

Richard Watson Gilder

Sport, which mimics the language and emotional intensity of war but eliminates
the fatal destruction, may be a form of redemption.

Never be embarrassed by the things you cannot do. Be embarrassed by the things you can do and don't do well.

In an age of specialization people are proud to be able to do one thing well, but if that is all they know about, they are missing out on much else life has to offer.

Dennis Flanagan

Poetry, perhaps the finest of fine arts, certainly the shynest and most elusive?, poetry which must have listeners, which cannot sing into a void.

You see, time is an ocean, not a garden hose. Space is a puff of smoke, a wisp of cloud.

David Wong (writer)

Garden: One of a vast number of free outdoor restaurants operated by charity-minded amateurs in an effort to provide healthful, balanced meals for insects, birds and animals.

But I account it worth
All pangs of fair hopes crost—
All loves and honors lost,—
To gain the heavens, at cost
Of losing earth.

Theodore Tilton

Poetry, the noble brotherhood who speak in tones of harmony, grandeur & pathos.

James Grant Wilson

We know people by their stories: their history, their habits, their secrets, their triumphs and failures. We know them by what they do. We want to know mountains too, but they've got no story. So we do the next best thing. We throw ourselves onto them and make the stories happen.

Low gurgling laughter, as sweet As the swallow's song i' the South, And a ripple of dimples that, dancing, meet By the curves of a perfect mouth.

Paul Hamilton Hayne

My own personal theory is that this is the very dawn of the world. We're hardly more than an eyeblink away from the fall of Troy, and scarcely an interglaciation removed from the Altamira cave painters. We live in extremely interesting ancient times.
I like this idea. It encourages us to be earnest and ingenious and brave, as befits ancestral peoples; but keeps us from deciding that because we don't know all the answers, they must be unknowable and thus unprofitable to pursue.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Black is the hardest color in the world to get right-except for gray...

Liquor is not a necessity. It is a means of momentarily sidestepping necessity.

Clifton Fadiman

In matching your wits against yourself you take on the shrewdest and wiliest antagonist you can have, and consequently a victorious outcome in this duel of wits brings a great feeling of triumph.

Dorothea Brande

Take a hard look at those things, which we needlessly turn into burdens, when they were meant to be blessings.

Elaine A. Cannon

Justice, even-handed justice, for the Negro—that which, according to American profession, is every man's birthright—that I claimed, nothing less.

Samuel Ringgold Ward

Above the warehouse and beneath the stars The poets creep on the harp of the Bridge. But see, They fall into the National Cold Storage Company One by one. The wind off the river is too cold, Or the times too rough, or the Bridge Is not a harp at all. Or maybe A monstrous birth inside the warehouse Must be fed by everything—ships, poems, Stars, all the years of our lives.

Harvey Shapiro (poet)

A city of strivers pushing forward from immigrant enclaves.

Grace Mirabella

And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.

Philip Morin Freneau

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.