Robert Benchley Quotes about Writing

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Writing, Men, Pieces

James Thurber, The Bermudian Magazine, November 1950.

If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.

Robert Benchley

Writing, Wind, Mind

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

Robert Benchley

Spring, Writing, Soul

Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

Robert Benchley

Writing, Knowing, Serious

Life Magazine, March 8, 1929.