Verni Robert Quillen (March 25, 1887 – December 9, 1948) was an American journalist and humorist who for more than a quarter century was "one of the leading purveyors of village nostalgia" from his home in Fountain Inn, South Carolina.

He moved on to Americus, Georgia, and then took his new bride to Washington state, where Quillen joined forces with his father and worked at publishing newspapers and magazines in Winlock, Anacortes, and Port Orchard.

[7] In 1910, when his brother-in-law in Fountain Inn offered to sell him a weekly advertising sheet called News and Notions, Quillen bought it and borrowed money to purchase his own press and type.

"[9] Among other oddities, Quillen regularly wore a "cowboy-type Stetson," raised a memorial to "Eve, the First Woman," published his father's obituary before he died, used a column to advertise his interest in adopting a baby boy ("must be between three and twelve months of age"), and built himself a faux Greek temple as a work space—which he never used.

[10] Facile with words, Quillen took inconsistent political, economic, and racial positions; but he was "not afraid to bare his soul, express personal views, and even vent scorn and anger.

"[11] For instance, he hated patent medicine, people who put on airs, late night noises (both human and natural), and the cats and jays that killed his beloved song birds.

[17] Quillen wrote for such major periodicals such as the Baltimore Sun, the Saturday Evening Post, and The American Magazine, and he "took the greatest pride" in one-liners picked up by Literary Digest.

The first was "little more than a loose collection of pieces first published in the Saturday Evening Post," the second, a book which one reviewer called a "good enough conventional story, hampered by neither originality nor brilliancy.