Quotes

12-28-11: I spend an inordinate amount of time doing nothing. I don't even think it can be called daydreaming.
— Joyce Carol Oates

12-22-11: I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth. Then I ask myself the same question.
– Harun Yahya

10-20-11: Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
– Oscar Wilde

10-08-11: "I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing. If I do an interview with photographs people desperately want to change me - dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that’s not me. I feel uncomfortable. I’d never go out in a mini-skirt. It’s nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn’t do that. Personally, I don’t actually think it’s even that sexy. What’s sexy about saying, ‘I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I’ve got'? My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder."
– Emma Watson

10-08-11: Who could have dreamed that such tragic depths lay behind that serene facade, and that her orderly precision was like the grass and flowers upon volcanic soil with vesuvian fires slumbering below?
– William Hale White, The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford

10-06-11: You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
– Steve Jobs

10-05-11: I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.
– Twyla Tharp

10-04-11: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

10-03-11: Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
– Goethe

10-02-11: We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
– Anais Nin

09-06-10: Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
– Dale Carnegie

03-13-10: I dare you to move like today never happened.
– Switchfoot, Dare You to Move, 2003

03-9-10: So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains. And we never even know we have the key.
– Eagles, Already Gone, 1974

02-21-10: Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.
– Sharon O'Brien

02-16-10: The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
– Allan K Chalmers

11-10-09: "Everybody says that time heals everything. But what of the endless hollow? The endless in between. Are we just supposed to wait it out?
– Imogen Heap, Ellipse 2009

07-17-09: No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
– Unknown

06-13-09: I don't know how much of what I say is true.

– Bette Midler

04-10-09: The only thing standing between you and a watery grave is your wits, and that's not my idea of adequate protection.
– Beat the Devil (1954)

03-27-09: Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.
– Max Frisch (1911-1991)

03-17-09: Status quo. Latin for the mess we're in.
– Jeve Moorman

02-12-09: Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
– Unknown

01-24-09: Only the shallow know themselves.
– Oscar Wilde

12-14-08: Peter: "Why did you bring me over here for? This is absurd. It's just a dog."
Barrie: "Just a dog? Just? Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to dash those dreams by saying he's 'just a dog'? What a horrible, candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, 'He can't climb that mountain; he's just a man.' Or, 'That's not a diamond; it's just a rock.' Just."
Peter: "Fine then. Turn him into a bear. If you can."
Barrie: "With those eyes, my bonny lad, I'm afraid you'd never see it."
– Finding Neverland, 2004

12-08-08: There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
– Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

11-17-08: Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?
– George Price

10-25-08: Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive.
– Eric A. Burns

08-31-08: A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
– George Bernard Shaw

07-28-08: Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else.
– James Thorpe

07-13-08: You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
– G.K. Chesterton

07-06-08: Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
– Colette, Casual Chance, 1964

06-23-08: The best style is the style you don't notice.
– Somerset Maugham

06-11-08: I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
– Hoban 'Wash' Washburn, Serenity (2005)

06-03-08: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
– Mark Twain

05-12-08: Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
– George Carlin

05-04-08: I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
– Jane Austen

04-27-08: Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
– Jane Wagner

04-20-08: I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
– Saul Bellow

04-13-08: Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
– Michel de Montaigne

04-06-08: So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
– Peter Drucker

03-30-08: By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
– Charles Wadsworth

03-16-08: Any event, once it has happened, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.
– Lee Simonson

03-09-08: 3) Agents like a brief selling handle summing up the book's main plot. Which answer most closely resembles the state of your pitch?
A. My book is about a terrible incident involving a lost puppy, a lovelorn woman searching the Internet, and several shirtless firemen. In a crazy twist at the end, the lovelorn woman finds the puppy via the Internet, rescues it, and realizes that one of the shirtless firemen is in love with her. It's a Romantic Thriller.
B. My book is about a terrible incident involving a puppy, a woman, and some firemen. There's some sort of twist at the end involving the puppy, the woman, and a fireman. Fireworks ensue. Not literal fireworks, although I haven't completely ruled them out. I think it might be a Romance.
C. My book is about a pet, a woman, and some guy who's either a cop, a fireman, or something hot like that. Things happen in the book, and characters change. There's conflict, and it's resolved. I've narrowed down the pet to either a dog or a domesticated alligator.
D. My book will have several chapters and a main character who's probably going to be a woman. Or a man. Definitely one of the two.
– Kevin Alexander's Are You Ever Going to Finish That Novel? Quiz

02-24-08: The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
– Vladimir Nabakov

02-17-08: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth

02-09-08: Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.
– Faith Baldwin

02-06-08: Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
– William Safire, Great Rules of Writing

01-27-08: The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
– James Baldwin

01-20-08: It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
– Martin Luther King Jr.

01-13-08: What a pity human beings can’t exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow’s.
– Olin Miller

01-13-08: Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
– Anton Chekhov

12-31-07: I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
– James Michener

12-16-07: Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
– E.L. Doctorow

12-09-07: Don't be humble. You're not that great.
– Golda Meir

12-02-07: You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
–James D. Miles

11-25-07: Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne

11-18-07: If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
–Toni Morrison

11-11-07: Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
– Marcel Marceau

11-04-07: It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
– John Andrew Holmes

10-26-07: It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.
– Gustave Flaubert