"He does not write at all whose poem no man reads." Martial

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing." Sylvia Plath

"If you do not write for publication, there is little point in writing at all." George Bernard Shaw

"A copy of verses kept in the cabinet, and only shown to a few friends, is like a virgin much sought after and admired; but when printed and published, is like a common whore, whom anybody may purchase for half-a-crown." Jonathan Swift

"Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one's sputum." Vladimir Nabokov

"Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least." Horace