"Where do great ideas come from?"  We'd love to know!  From Together, 1957.

Thanks to Wesley de F. Coelho for writing, "The first time I listened to your words, I was feeling lost, but you changed something inside me that day. Today, I got a research grant and doing the work mostly steadily helped me find my way. Thank you."

It's an enduring question.  From Woroni, 1978.

From DePauw's 1905 yearbook.

It's rare to find an anti-dedication / non-acknowledgment in a book.  This one disrespects the Canadian Council for refusing a grant application, putting the author onto the street for an entire winter.  From Incurable Trucks & Speeding Diseases by Crad Kilodney, 1986.

This is what we, too, say when "invited" to modify our writing -- "I'm afraid it's impossible.  I just can't revise the manuscript."  From Fantastic Adventures, 1945.

"And there's soul in every stroke of the pen."  From Woroni, 1977.

"Alien creature guides writer."  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1996.

From Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background by Wayne Koestenbaum.

"We write because we have to, but knowing that there people out there who really latch on to what we're trying to do in such a favorable way is both gratifying and justifying" (Thomas M. Reid).

Don't miss Mr. Venright's deadpan video, in which he shares his 117 steps to instant gratification.  It's a total scream.

That feeling of being neither alive nor writing nor in Nebraska.  From Alive and Writing in Nebraska.

Paul Berthon's "Andhré des Gachons," from The Chap-Book, 1896.  

There are zero Google Books results for "writing with spilled ink."  Yet it's how we compose all of our own books.  From Purdue's 1907 yearbook.

From the 1923 yearbook of the Presbyterian College of South Carolina.

"A book is tremendously important.  Nobody ever paid for the price of a book, they pay only for the printing.  But a book is actually an offering and must be regarded as such.  If you give honor to the man who writes it, there is something in that which further induces the expressive powers of writing."

—Louis I. Kahn, "I Love Beginnings" lecture, 1972

A caution to writers: a celestial globe is like spell-checking software, in that once you grow accustomed to having it, dependency grows.  A celestial globe is one of the many tools we use for writing our lesser-known works of esoterica. 

From Desoto's 1981 yearbook.

Here's a great justification for varnishing the truth, which I'll summarize for your convenience (though of course the original passage is superior):

1. varnish brings out veins of beauty that were otherwise invisible

2. it doesn't actually hide the sober facts of life since it's transparent

3. having penetrated the artifice, the observer's powers of insight are flattered and attention is better secured

4. even the coarsest mundanity has moods in which it's gilded by the light of romance

5. if the storyteller believes in the true gold of those fairy minarets, the story benefits

From Idolatry by Julian Hawthorne, 1874.