Life Wisdom& MOTIVATION My collection0

WORDS FROM A GREAT MIND

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Writer, critic & literary scholar

Portrait of Arthur Quiller-Couch
Born
21 November 1863
Died
12 May 1944
Lived in
Cornwall, Oxford & Cambridge

Arthur Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, critic, editor, and Cambridge professor who published fiction and essays under the signature ‘Q’. His lectures treated literature as a living art, while his Oxford Book of English Verse shaped generations of readers.

A LESSER-KNOWN DETAIL

He signed much of his work with the single letter ‘Q’. His brisk advice to ‘murder your darlings’ became one of the most repeated — and most often misattributed — rules in writing.

Words by Arthur Quiller-Couch

“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
Arthur Quiller-Couch ↗
“Literature is a living art, and therefore it must be personal and of its essence personal.”
Arthur Quiller-Couch ↗