Mark Twain? H. Jackson Brown? Sarah Frances Brown? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The Virgin Galactic company of Richard Branson plans to offer suborbital spaceflights for tourists. The organization put together a beautiful brochure containing the following quotation credited to Mark Twain:[1]Virgin Galactic website at virgingalactic.com, Link on homepage for Downloadable Brochure describing suborbital space flights. …
Monthly Archives: September 2011
You Can’t Wait for Inspiration. You Have To Go After It With a Club
Jack London? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: I belong to a great group for writers in Florida, and a recent announcement message on our mailing list included a motivational quotation attributed to the author and journalist Jack London: You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Since London died in …
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A Story Should Have a Beginning, a Muddle and an End
Peter De Vries? Philip Larkin? C. E. Lombardi? Larry Gelbart? Avi’s Young Reader? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: When faced with the difficult task of writing effectively some people insist on a guaranteed formula. As a confirmed scribbler I am convinced that there is no formula, but I laughed when I heard this: A story consists …
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Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and Bleed
Thomas Wolfe? Red Smith? Paul Gallico? Friedrich Nietzsche? Ernest Hemingway? Gene Fowler? Jeff MacNelly? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Whenever I have trouble writing I am reminded of a brilliant saying that uses a horrifyingly expressive metaphor to describe the difficult process of composition: Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed. Here is …
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Computer Memory: 640K Ought to be Enough for Anyone
Bill Gates? James E. Fawcette? Nancy Andrews? Jerry Pournelle? InfoWorld? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Bill Gates is the one of the richest men in the world, but that does not mean that he correctly foresaw the future. In the early days of the personal computer industry Gates supposedly said the following about the IBM PC: …
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Update: Not Everything That Counts Can be Counted
Albert Einstein? William Bruce Cameron? Hilliard Jason? Stephen Ross? Lord Platt? George Pickering? Quote Investigator: QI has updated the entry about a popular quotation attributed to Einstein. The saying combines two distinct but related phrases: Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted. The entry now presents earlier evidence …
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