Favorite Writerly Quote.

"I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better." -- Papa Hemingway
Honestly, I feel this way--like it is a contest.  (Even if that's vain or dumb...It makes it fun.)   Maybe you could, like, replace Turgenev with Stephenie Meyer, Stendahl with J.K. Rowling... and Tolstoy with Dostoyevsky. (Pretty natural.)

Then, another quote I like: "I took on the world.  I'm pretty.  I'm a bad man."  (Actually, any Muhammed Ali quote--can't go wrong.)

Then, while I'm at it -- with boxing metaphors: Picasso  [in Dore Ashton's "Picasso on Art," one of my favorite books ever] said a boxer told him: to be in the ring, you feel like a diver at the bottom of the sea.  With the weight of the whole ocean on you.  That's pretty deep.    

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