If it can be translated, it’s not literature.
Writing
If it had been your exact thought you would have used my exact words.
Aphorism comes less from finding wisdom than losing patience.
Paying authors by the word is like paying programmers by the line.
All authors suspect, while they have no readers, that they are worthless. Then they acquire a few, and become convinced.
A solitary aphorism can be perfect; a collection of them can only be intolerable.
Cynics don’t write. To print one’s words, expecting others to heed or even read them, is an act of preposterous faith in human nature.
I ask one thing of literature: that it draw blood.
Writing is hard. Writing about how hard writing is is somewhat easier.
To see one’s thought summarized aptly and briefly is the rare experience that is flattering and humiliating in equal measure.
The satirist’s punishment is praise from his intended victims.