WIST Quotations

Bolt, Robert -- Doctor Zhivago, Part 1, film (1965)

Dave — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 20:19:50 +0000

YEVGRAF: Happy men don’t volunteer. They wait their turn, and thank God if their age or work delays it.

Robert Bolt (1924-1995) English dramatist
Doctor Zhivago, Part 1, film (1965)
(Source)

On army recruitment. This line is not in the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel.

Hemingway, Ernest -- (Attributed)

Dave — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 23:13:23 +0000

Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
(Attributed)

A comment from Hemingway to Arnold Samuelson in 1934, as retold in Samuelson, With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984). More discussion here and here.

Bowen, Elizabeth -- Encounters, Preface to the 1951 Edition (1923)

Dave — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:23:41 +0000

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) Irish author
Encounters, Preface to the 1951 Edition (1923)
(Source)