Gene Fowler Quotes

Gene Fowler offers blunt, funny reflections on writing, blood, and mental rust, a good fit for anyone who likes dark humor.

27 quotes

1. Sometimes I think it sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

2. Men are not against you, they are merely for themselves.

3. A book is never finished; it's abandoned.

4. The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

5. Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

6. He has a profound respect for old age. Especially when it's bottled.

7. Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind.

8. What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.

9. A man should love two cities, its own and San Francisco.

10. Wilson Mizner

11. An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.

12. Perhaps no mightier conflict of mind occurs ever again in a lifetime than that first decision to unseat one's own tooth.

13. Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament be read and taught as a divine revelation in school? Where else can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?

14. News is history shot on the wing.

15. Never thank anybody for anything, except a drink of water in the desert - and then make it brief.

16. It is easier to believe than to doubt.

17. It is no disgrace to rest a bit.

18. Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

19. A man who makes a one-dollar profit on his expense account is dishonest. A man who loses five cents on one is a damned fool.

20. Love and memory last and will so endure till the game is called because of darkness.

21. Psychoanalysts seem to be long on information and short on application.

22. Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

23. Whatever one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind.

24. I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the world's shortest speech. He said I will be so brief I have already finished, and he sat down.

25. If they haven't heard it before it's original.

26. News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.

27. “Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”