I’ve recently started reading The Paris Wife; at 70 pages in, I’m completely captivated by this historical fiction piece and forgetting it’s not an autobiography. More so, I’m reminded of my fascination and love of The Lost Generation– an era of writers, poets, painters, sculptors and artists that occupied Paris in the 1920s. Many of the 20th century’s greatest authors came from this era: Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, and T. S. Eliot.
While fiction, it’s in reading The Paris Wife that I’m reminded of and learning so much about Hemingway’s efforts to become a writer– how the path to greatness and glory is not easily found for anyone; how we all have to take jobs to pay our bills while spending our spare time pursuing our passions. With that in mind, here are 10 quotes from authors in The Lost Generation on the act of writing, reading, and creating.
You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting… It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.
- Gertrude Stein
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
- John Steinbeck
You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
- Ernest Hemingway
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
- T.S. Eliot
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
- John Steinbeck
All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.
- Ernest Hemingway
Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.
- Ernest Hemingway
Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.
-Gertrude Stein
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
- T.S. Eliot
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
- John Steinbeck
Cut out all of these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
- T.S. Eliot
All good writing is like swimming under water and holding your breath.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
As fashion weeks rears its head (and you’re getting ready for IFB Con!), I hope these quotes prove as inspiring, perplexing, challenging, and moving as they are to me.
[Image credit: Hemmingway and a crowd, from Food Republic]
I read it this summer. It’s my second favourite book of all time. I haven’t read the rest of the article yet but I just have to comment about my love for the book The Paris Wife <3
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.- Definitely my favorite quote. Alexander Wang started to make sweaters that eventually became so popular that it help him become more successful. It just takes one good idea.
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