Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

I don't know enough to be incompetent.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

Don't write about that which you don't know.

Management does not know what a system is.

The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.

I like vocal word stuff. But I don't always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It's more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It's closest to the choreography of a bee. You're freer.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

There are some things around us that are not actually useful. I didn't know that before. It's very new for me to understand. That became my way of writing: I can see also the new myself.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows.

Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.

She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.

I don't like writing as an expert. I like writing as an amateur. I like writing as an idiot. It's much more fun to start in ignorance.

I write about what I know, what I live, what I observe.

The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously

You really can’t write unless you read. You have to know what the game is all about.

To anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.

I know that you don't know, but you don't know that you don't know.

Who were my mentors in poetry and literature? This is a matter of opinion. Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read. And what is my opinion? From whom did I receive nurture? Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

Of course, the more you read, the more you learn, and ultimately there is more information than you can ever use. The difficulty is that as an outsider, you know you're too ignorant for your own good, and so the urge to keep researching and *never* start writing is pretty strong.