This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Mere reading of the scriptures is not enough. A person cannot understand the true significance of the scriptures if he is attached to the world.
Reading | Understand |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.
Better | God | Knowledge | People | Reading | Understanding | God | Think |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down - everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
Writing |
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.
Better | Children | Cult | Good | Little | Mystery | Need | Past | Peace | Story | War | Will | Writing |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.
Individual | People | Style | Will | Writing |
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel.
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Reading |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Necessity | Perception | Writing |
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.