“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

—  Helen Keller , book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to w…" by Helen Keller?
Helen Keller photo
Helen Keller 156
American author and political activist 1880–1968

Related quotes

Antonin Artaud photo

“All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director
John Angell James photo

“Try how much of the word of God you can understand, and what is more, try how much you can practice. A sincere wish and purpose to do the will of God, will be your best way to know the mind of God.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 554.

David Levithan photo

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

John Howe (illustrator) photo

“History is like a jigsaw puzzle, except every piece is from a different puzzle, and you try to make them all fit.”

John Howe (illustrator) (1957) Canadian illustrator

Lost Worlds : A visit with John Howe (May 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGaxYZX-N3Q
Context: History is like a jigsaw puzzle, except every piece is from a different puzzle, and you try to make them all fit. Although you many never have a finished picture, the time you spend, I think you end up understanding at least the pieces.

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Nous essayons de nous faire honneur des défauts que nous ne voulons pas corriger.
Maxim 442.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Benjamin W. Lee photo

“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

Benjamin W. Lee (1935–1977) Korean American physicist

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Neal Stephenson photo

“Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ("trilogy"). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word "trilogy" on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone's going to call it a trilogy anyway.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Baroque Cycle entry in now-defunct MetaWeb

Stephen King photo

“Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: La Milla Verde

Courtney B. Vance photo

“I don’t think there is a secret. We definitely didn’t find it. We discovered that it’s work. But we already knew that. It was very fun to actually walk through our time together and see the timeline presented. When we started the process, we didn’t really think we had a book. But in that sense, it was fun to actually have someone to walk us through so that we didn’t have to try to put a framework to it since we didn’t know what the framework was. But from talking to [co-author Hilary Beard] together and individually, she was able to say, “This is actually a book.” We didn’t start out to write a 300-page book. We started out with something much simpler and it morphed into that. It was fun to be able to talk about our journey together, because that’s what it is, it is a journey.”

Courtney B. Vance (1960) American actor

Courtney B. Vance on Battling The Mummy and the Secret to a Lasting Hollywood Marriage https://parade.com/575448/walterscott/courtney-b-vance-on-battling-the-mummy-and-the-secret-to-a-lasting-hollywood-marriage/ (June 2, 2017)

Related topics