Logan Pearsall Smith Writing Quotations

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.