I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like
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The structure of a play is always
the story of how the birds came home to roost.
ARTHUR MILLER
The more familiar metaphor is chickens coming home to roost, but it means the same thing—our deeds and choices come back to haunt us, like chickens returning to the henhouse each night. The idea was first expressed in 1810 by English poet Robert Southey: “Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.” It’s also what Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind in his famous “banquet of consequences” line, which we examined earlier.
Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.
One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven
by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
GEORGE ORWELL
True ease in writing comes from Art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
ALEXANDER POPE
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter,
open up a vein, and bleed it out drop by drop.
WALTER “RED” SMITH
This is the best known of the analogies that view writing as a kind of blood-letting. The first articulation of the idea came from Sydney Smith, who said of the nineteenth-century English politician Henry Fox: “Fox wrote drop by drop.” A popular variation on the theme comes from the American screenwriter Gene Fowler: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country.
And for that reason, no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway.
Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies,
at others the churned-up mud of the road.
STENDHAL
Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation.
LAURENCE STERNE
Authors are actors, books are theaters.
WALLACE STEVENS
Along the same lines, Rod Serling wrote, “Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Write while the heat is in you.
The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts
uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.
He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A sentence should read as if its author,
had he held a plough instead of a pen,
could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A writer judging his own work is like a deceived husband—
he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.
ROBERT TRAVER
Robert Traver is the pen name of John D. Voelker, a Michigan lawyer who was a prosecuting attorney before becoming a Michigan Supreme Court Justice. He wrote many books reflecting his two passions—the law and flyfishing—but is best remembered for the 1958 book Anatomy of a Murder.
Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom
and I will show you the makings of a dramatist.
KENNETH TYNAN
High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water;
but everybody likes water.
MARK TWAIN
Twain wrote this in an 1887 letter to a friend, but the idea first occurred to him two years earlier. An 1885 journal entry, written exactly this way, went as follows: “My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
The instruction we find in books is like fire.
We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home,
communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
VOLTAIRE
It is with books as with men;
a very small number play a great part; the rest are lost in the multitude.
VOLTAIRE
On the books that have played a great part, the American poet and writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich observed: “Books that have become classics—books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal—always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.”
I can never understand how two men can write a book together;
to me that’s like three people getting together to have a baby.
EVELYN WAUGH
Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer—
he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in.
Delay is instinctive with him.
He waits for the surge…that will carry him along.
E. B. WHITE
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps,
but still attached to life at all four corners.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick;
only amateurs believe in inspiration.
FRANK YERBY
Edna Ferber said similarly: “Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill, and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!”
Writing is thinking on paper.
WILLIAM ZINSSER
WRITERS ON CRITICS & REVIEWERS: A METAPHORICAL POTPOURRI
The poison pens of writers have been directed at many targets over the years, but never more venomously than when aimed at critics and reviewers. A sampling of the best appear below.
American critics are like American universities.
They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
EDWARD ALBEE
Reviewers are, as Coleridge declared,
a species of maggots, inferior to bookworms,
living on the delicious brains of real genius.
WALTER BAGEHOT
A critic is a bundle of biases held
loosely together by a sense of taste.
WHITNEY BALLIETT
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They’re there every night,
they see how it should be done every night,
but they can’t do it themselves.
BRENDAN BEHAN
A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic.
No more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.
JIM BISHOP
And, of course, with the birth of the artist
came the inevitable afterbirth—the critic.
MEL BROOKS, from History of the World, Part I
Critics…
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
ROBERT BURNS
The critic roams through culture, looking for prey.
MASON COOLEY
Critics…are of two sorts:
those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty,
and those, less continent, who afterwards scratch it up.
WILLIAM EMPSON
A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist,
in the same way that a man becomes an informer
when he cannot be a soldier.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Don’t be dismayed by
the opinions of editors, or critics.
They are only the traffic cops of the arts.
GENE FOWLER
Critical lice are like body lice,
which desert corpses to seek the living.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
&nb
sp; What a blessed thing it is that nature,
when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors,
contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing
clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live.
It is the same with critics—
they desire our blood, not our pain.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics
is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
JOHN OSBORNE, quoted in Time magazine, October 31, 1977
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions,
are a most stupid and malignant race.
As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair,
so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A poet that fails in writing becomes often a morose critic;
the weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A bad review is like baking a cake
with all the best ingredients
and having someone sit on it.
DANIELLE STEELE
The critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug; he deposits his egg
in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.
MARK TWAIN
A critic is a man who knows
the way but can’t drive the car.
KENNETH TYNAN JOHN UPDIKE
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry
as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
JOHN UPDIKE
I have long felt that any reviewer
who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous.
He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor
and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Critics are like the brushers of noblemen’s clothes.
HENRY WOTTON
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
acknowledgments
When I began working on this book, I wasn’t sure what to title it, so I put the question to the people who subscribe to my weekly e-newsletter (Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week). Out of the hundreds of suggestions received, the one I finally selected was independently suggested by five separate people. I was aware of the saying—a clever alteration of a famous remark from Will Rogers—but for some reason hadn’t chosen it. A special thanks to the following people:
Maya DeBus, Don Groves, Sam Hanson, Don Hauptman, and Stan Laite
My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Katherine Robinson, who is a partner in every aspect of my life, including my book-writing efforts.
I would also like to thank my agent, George Greenfield of CreativeWell, Inc., and my HarperCollins editor, Phil Friedman, for their invaluable help.
Many hundreds of subscribers to my newsletter—far too numerous to list here—have provided me with quotations, many of which have found their way into this book. My heartfelt thanks to all. The contributions of the following people, however, deserve special mention: Don Hauptman for his regular donvelopes, Carolanne Reynolds for her helpful feedback, Terry Coleman for her knowledge of all things canine and equine, and finally to the following people for their long-standing interest in, and support of, my efforts: Karé Anderson, Amy Brennan, Pam Bruce, Jerry Caplin, Linnda Durré, Loren Ekroth, Howard Eskin, Carl Faith, Anu Garg, Fran Hamilton, Dan and Linda Hart, David Hartson, Blair Hawley, Art Haykin, Chuck Jambotkar, Norman and Gary Kaplan, Derm Keohane, Bob Kelly, Amit Kothari, Julius La Rosa, Richard Lederer, Milton Lewin, Marlene and Barney Ovrut, Kalman Packhous, Richard Raymond III, Dennis Ridley, Don Ruhl, Lee Sechrest, Ed Sizemore, Ed Schneider, Art Tugman, G. Armour Van Horn, and Joseph Woods.
searchable terms
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
Aaron, Henry “Hank,” 280, 289
Abbey, Edward, 17
Abley, Mark, 103–4
About, Edmond, 186
Achard, Marcel, 298
Achebe, Chinua, 45
Ackerman, Diane, 26
Adams, Douglas, 66, 239
Adams, Henry Brooks, 45
Adams, Joey, 67
Adams, John, 254, 259
Adams, John Quincy, 79, 218–19,
Addison, Joseph, 4
Adler, Mortimer, 26
Aeschylus, 26, 200
Akhenaton, 2
Akihito, Crown Prince of Japan, 60–61
Albee, Edward, 311
Alcott, Louisa May, 103, 122
Aldington, Richard, 263
Aldiss, Brian, 229
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 309
Aleichem, Sholom, 122, 163
Ali, Muhammad, 163, 280, 282, 289
Allen, Dick, 280
Allen, Fred, 124, 240
Allen, Steve, 62
Allen, Woody, 67, 140, 204, 207, 240
Allende, Isabel, 203
Allport, Gordon W., 163
Alsop, Joseph W., Jr., 259
Alsop, Stewart, 225
Ames, Fisher, 255
Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, 26, 225
Amory, Cleveland, 67
Anacharsis, 256–57
Anderson, Marian, 43
Andrews, Julie, 248
Angelino, Henry, 204
Angell, Roger, 16
Angelou, Maya, 45, 122, 143, 163
Anouilh, Jean, 163–64, 298
Anthony, Susan B., 225
Antisthenes, 3–4
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 241
Aristotle, 9, 10, 11, 14, 123, 142, 143, 259
Armstrong, Louis Satchmo,” 83
Arnold, Matthew, 111
Asch, Sholem, 298
Ashley, Elizabeth, 205
Asimov, Isaac, 123, 127, 299
Astor, Mary, 205
Attlee, Clement, 89
Atwood, Margaret, 186
Auchincloss, Louis, 84
Auden, W. H., 67, 143
Augustine, Saint, 11
Babbin, Jed, 92
Bachelard, Gaston, 116
Bacon, Francis, 19, 27, 186–87
Baer, Arthur “Bugs,” 187, 281
Bagehot, Walter, 13, 311
Baker, Russell, 67–68, 123, 187, 259, 280
Baldwin, Faith, 58, 115
Baldwin, James, 123, 160, 203, 241, 301
Baldwin, Stanley, 86
Ball, George, 112
Ballard, J. G., 260
Balliett, Whitney, 311
Balzac, Honoré de, 27, 45, 124, 162, 164, 187, 205, 260, 293
Bankhead, Tallulah, 87
Bardot, Brigitte, 113
Barr, Roseanne, 205
Barrie, James M., 93, 119–20, 124
Barrington, Jonah, 279
Barry, Dave, 68
Barry, Lynda, 160, 164
Barrymore, Drew, 241
Barrymore, Ethel, 241
Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste, 84
Baruch, Bernard, 299
Bates, Marston, 114
Bateson, Mary Catherine, 225
Baudelaire, Charles, 120, 164, 213, 304
Baudrillard, Jean, 205–6
Bauer, Gerard, 115
Bayan, Rick, 46, 109, 143, 225
Baylor, Don, 281
Beach, Sylvia, 299
Beale, Howard K., 85
Beard, James, 68
Beaton, Cecil, 85
Beatty, Warren, 208
Bednarik, Chuck,
278
Beecham, Thomas, 83, 85
Beecher, Henry Ward, 27, 45, 107, 162, 164, 171, 222
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 95
Begley, Sharon, 112
Behan, Brendan, 311
Belli, Melvin, 85
Belloc, Hilaire, 299
Bellow, Saul, 206, 299
Bench, Johnny, 281
Bennett, Alan, 124
Bergen, Edgar, 264
Bergman, Ingmar, 237–38, 241
Bergman, Ingrid, 225
Berle, Milton, 187
Berne, Eric, 163
Berra, Yogi, 281
Bierce, Ambrose, 158
Billings, Josh, (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), 45, 124, 144
Bishop, Jim, 311
Bismarck, Otto von, 260
Black, Lewis, 68
Blakely, Mary Kay, 187
Blanchard, Ken, 108
Blessington, Marguerite, 46, 185, 299
Blount, Roy, Jr., 73
Bocca, Geoffrey, 64
Bodie, Frank Stephen “Ping,” 281
Bogart, Humphrey, 248
Bonds, Barry, 16
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 27
Booth, Edward, 236
Booth, John Wilkes, 236
Borg, Björn, 284–85
Borge, Victor, 64
Borges, Jorge Luis, 165
Boudreaux, Donald J., 262
Boulding, Kenneth E., 17
Bourgeois, Jeanne, 149
Bourget, Paul, 292
Bowen, Elizabeth, 164, 169
“Boy George,” (George Alan O'Dowd), 88
Bradbury, Malcolm, 68
Bradbury, Ray, 46
Bradstreet, Anne, 27–28
Bradstreet, Simon, 28
Brancusi, Constantin, 102
Brando, Marlon, 94
Braude, Jacob M., 124
Brawne, Fanny, 149
Brenan, Gerald, 159, 187
Brett, George, 283
Breuer, Josef, 221–22
Brice, Fanny, 193
Britt, Stuart H., 5
Broder, David, 260–61
Brokaw, Tom, 261
Bronson, Charles, 89
Brontë, Charlotte, 44
Brooks, Albert, 241–42
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 225
Brooks, Mel, 62, 312
Brooks, Phillips, 113
Brooks, Van Wyck, 86
Brothers, Joyce, 165, 188
Broun, Heywood, 84
Brown, Drew “Bundini,” 280
Brown, Helen Gurley, 165