Gore Vidal? Lucinda Ebersole? Rand B. Lee? Anonymous?
Dear Quote Investigator: Aspiring authors are typically told to set aside enough time to make writing into a daily habit. The provocative author Gore Vidal apparently employed an extreme version of this injunction:
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
Did Vidal coin this astringently comical remark?
Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in “The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations” in 1986:[1]1986, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations, Revised and Enlarged, Edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, Section: Writers and Writing, Quote Page 388, Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto. … Continue reading
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note. Anon.
The creator was unidentified and no citation was provided. An identical entry appeared in the 1987 successor volume “Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations” from the same editor Robert I. Fitzhenry.[2]1987, Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations: Revised and Enlarged, Edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, Section: Writers and Writing, Quote Page 388, Barnes & Noble Books, Division of Harper & Row, … Continue reading
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order including evidence that Gore Vidal did use the expression.
Continue reading Write Something, Even If It’s Just a Suicide Note
References
| ↑1 | 1986, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations, Revised and Enlarged, Edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, Section: Writers and Writing, Quote Page 388, Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto. (Verified on paper) |
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| ↑2 | 1987, Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations: Revised and Enlarged, Edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, Section: Writers and Writing, Quote Page 388, Barnes & Noble Books, Division of Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper) |