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"I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended."
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Exlpore more Writing quotes
"Writing. Is it a way to be remembered,or a need to become immortal?"
"The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory."
"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."
"Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets."
"My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward."
"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."
"A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."
"A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual."
Explore more quotes by Barbara Tuchman
"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."
"A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done."
"Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print."
"In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record."
"No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe."
"Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions."
"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."
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