The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. – Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words. – Norman Mailer, 1998