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The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when By Ralph Keyes
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"WRITING is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, Open up a vein
and bleed it out drop by drop. " Sportswriter Red Smith ( 1905—1982) is
frequently quoted to this effect. (Other versions include Tiere's nothing
to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein"; "Writing
is easy. I just open a vein and bleed"; and "Writing a column is easy. You
just sit down at your typewriter until little drops of blood appear On your
forehead.") Journalist Gene Fowler (1890—1960) is said to have observed
that "Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until
the drops of blood form on your forehead." Variations on this theme have
been attributed to novelists Daniel Keyes and Thomas Wolfe, without
sources. Whoever said it first, the quotation has a distinguished ancestor in
Sydney Smith's comment during the late 1830s about British statesman
Charles James Fox (1749—1806): "Fox wrote drop by drop."
Verdict: Credit Red Smith for articulating different versions of a
thought Common among colleagues, and expressed in a different form by
Sydney Smith.
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