Talkies -- Quotable Authors' Quotes We Like to Quote

We know we like them when they write, but how do we feel about them when they talk?

Oscar Wilde's repartee is easy to like with or without his mighty pen. For some years he was England's bon motiest of the bon mot-ers. Without doubt, one of the most quotable authors, I always believed Wilde's plays were transcriptions of the conversations he had in his head. Those being incarnations of what he wished he heard in the drawing rooms and dining rooms of London where, no doubt, he spent many a dull and uninspiring hour.

Is The Importance of Being Ernest about him and a wickedly witty best friend he would have liked to have but who he had to create in literature? Lady Windemere's Fan lets him drop some mots that even he could not drop in society. He gets to comment on its morals with this famous line:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Lord Darington

When we see a performance of An Ideal Husband we wonder if the lines in it and the husband are representative of Wilde and his relationship with his wife, or of Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred.

Wilde knew and faced the hard and unforgiving truth that is inescapable in his contemporary society and his life. We know because he said so, "Sooner or later, we shall all have to pay for what we do."

More Wilde-ness

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

True friends stab you in the front.

Genius is born—not paid.

. . .and one more. . .

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Have a favorite author who's notable and quotable? Tell us a little about that writer and give us some samples of the author's spoken wit or wisdom.

Dorothy Parker had plenty to say about fellow writers and their works. She also wrote more than a few shivering quotable passages.

About her own writing she said, "I can't write five words but that I change seven."

And about Clare booth Luce's purported unflappable gentility toward her inferiors she said, "And where does she find them?"

She didn't say the following. But she did write it!

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

Oscar Wilde, of course.

One of my personal favorites by Daniel J. Boorstin, because it applies to more than just science and history:

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge."

>3 jhicks62:

I'd say Boorstin is really close with that quote but not right on. I'd want it to read:

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is self-assurance of being right.

I think it's fairly harmless to have an illusion in comparison to the danger of holding onto a delusion.

"Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in." --Florence King

She just dies, so she's on my mind.

I found an Oscar Wilde quote pertaining to the ending of The Old Curiosity Shop, and I'd just about have to agree with him. While I enjoyed reading that novel, I've since discovered its particulars fade quickly from memory.

Should I quote some Mark Twain now, or maybe we'd best not get started so he doesn't take over this topic? :)

I thought this Italo Calvino quote was pretty solid: "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say." Then someone pointed out that this also pertains to every advertisement ever written, and all the wind went out of my sails.

Here's one I lean on whenever I steer off the classics: Phyllis McGinley said "A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”