"The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. | Growth | 1 bookmarks

"Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time)."

Hemingway, Ernest | Dictionaries | 1 bookmarks

"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. | Slang | 1 bookmarks

"Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things."

Raban, Jonathan | Travel and Tourism | 2 bookmarks

"To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up."

Orwell, George | Language | 4 bookmarks

"Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended."

Melville, Herman | Philosophers and Philosophy | 1 bookmarks

"In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing."

Prior, Matthew | Argument | 1 bookmarks

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature."

Hemingway, Ernest | Fiction | 2 bookmarks

"The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life."

Chandler, Raymond | Agents | 2 bookmarks

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. | Writers and Writing | 1 bookmarks