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Herman Melville Quotes about Writing

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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Herman Melville
Book, Writing, Fleas
Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

Herman Melville
Book, Writing, Men
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.5186, Delphi Classics

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.

Herman Melville
Book, Writing, Literature
Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Herman Melville
Writing, Literature, Impossible
Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.254, 谷月社

Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

Herman Melville
Art, Writing, Giving
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.428

Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

Herman Melville
Book, Writing, Doors
Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle, Hershel Parker (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.630, Northwestern University Press

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