Quotes about paper
page 3

“Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Light

“Sharing truth is not the kind of gift that comes in wrapping paper - ripped open once and, there, you're done. No, this is a gift that must be unfolded.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Truth

“The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Death, Star, Light, Night

“The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“I'm still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. fear, anger, everthing else… no contest.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: How to Save a Life

Love, Life, Fear, Anger

“Charlie Asher: Mrs. Ling, is that duck wearing trousers?
Mrs. Ling: Could be…. You hear of paper-wrap chicken? This duck in pants.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

“Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Heart

“Rachel, what do you do? Put an ad in the paper for trouble?
(Glenn)”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

“What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts”

Pat Conroy South of Broad

Source: South of Broad

Change, Time

“There's something about seeing a guy's feelings written down, something about him taking that risk and committing that heart to paper, that means so much more than anything he could just say.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver

Guy, Feeling, Heart

“Al was standing a bare three feet away, his mood almost jovial as he took the paper and it vanished in a wash of black sparkles.

“Thank you, Rachel,” he said, carefully reaching for my hand as Trent stiffened.

“Welcome back, my itchy witch.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Perfect Blood

Mood

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Way, Feeling

“he(Quinn)put his hand out to his friend. “I’ll lay my life down for you. With or Without that piece of paper”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Life

“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Misattributed
Variant: If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Source: Epigraph, in Fahrenheit 451 a translation of a statement by Juan Ramón Jiménez

Motivational, Back To Work, Way

“Would you mind getting off that fly paper and giving the flies a chance?"
"Ahhh, you can't trick me! Flies don't read papers!”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Chance, Reading, Flying

“Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Suffering

“Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Home, Reality, Waiting

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Do I Come Here Often

World, Light, Sun, Night

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812).

Heart Touching, Heart

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Motivational, Back To Work, Way

“If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat a little of her dinner. Maybe she could have a minute's worth of peace.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Peace, Sleep, Night

“Astriola. That IS demon pox. You had evidence that demon pox existed and you didnt mention it to me! Et tu, Brute!' He rolled up the paper and hit Jem over the head with it.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Effort, Learning

“But you’re everything I want. Remember that. I love you, Lia. Not a title. And not because a piece of paper says I should. Because I do.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Love

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

“Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Thinking

“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Source: Experience: A Memoir

Life

“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”

Thrity Umrigar book The Space Between Us

Source: The Space Between Us

Water

“Books are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves!”

Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)
Context: These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.

Books

“This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 50, ISBN 1586486389
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Reading

“It's not like a stab wound you can protect me from. It's like a million little paper cuts every day.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“I don't know if you know it, J. B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy.”

Joshua Ferris Then We Came to the End

Source: Then We Came to the End

Love, Way, Search, Business

“I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.”

Patrick Dennis (1921–1976) Novelist

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Joy School

Drawing

“A long white ribbon shot out of the crack in the wall. The ribbon just kept coming, weaving itself into some kind of shape next to Anubis, and my first thought was, My god, he’s got a magic roll of toilet paper.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

God

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Thinking

“Oh, obviously,” Reyna said. “Without you, I doubt Percy could find his way out of a paper bag.” “True,” Annabeth agreed.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Way

“I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

People

“Greg stands up, wiping his mouth. "I saw your mother's trial in the paper, Sharpe. I know you're just like her."

"If I was, I would make you beg to blow me," I sneer.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it…”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1890s
Source: The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894 being criticisms contributed week by week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973)

Flowers

“Artemis: Sometimes plans don't translate smoothly from paper to real life.”

Eoin Colfer book Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (2002)

Life

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Love, Life, People

“Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Time, Training

“This one looks good,” said Chong over breakfast the next morning.
Benny read out loud from the paper. “‘Pit Thrower.’ What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Chong said with a mouth full of toast. “I think it has something to do with barbecuing.”
It didn’t.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

Thinking, Reading

“The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

“She'd rather hoped for something simple, like a lined piece of notebook paper with MY EVIL PLAN written across the top, but no luck.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Hope, Evil

“This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Love, Life, Books

“Life before toilet paper was not worth living.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Life

“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Box

“When at last we are sure
You’ve been properly pilled,
Then a few paper forms
Must be properly filled
So that you and your heirs
May be properly billed.”

Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who!

You're Only Old Once! : A Book for Obsolete Children (1986)
Source: Horton Hears a Who!

“As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, Loneliness

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”

Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014) American writer of children's fiction

Source: The Velvet Room

Books, Business

“My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

World, Imagination, Idea

“The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned…….. THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.”

Ken Bruen (1951) Irish writer

Books

“Kids chase the love that eludes them, and for me, that was my father's love. He kept it tucked away, like papers in a briefcase. And I kept trying to get in there.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Love

“I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: The Yellow Wall-Paper

Life

“You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”

Tess Gerritsen book Body Double

Source: Body Double

Marriage

“The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.”

Mary Roach book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Source: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Home

“great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

People, World, Art, Reading

“Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Heart

“Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon.”

Joseph Bruchac (1942) American children's writer

Source: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two

Strong

“Like a mermaid rising from an ocean of paper, the girl emerged across the room.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Girl

“That man was so much larger than life that there's no scale by which to measure him. Most of Wilson's dialogue, if put down on paper, seems either vulgar or obscene.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

Gene Fowler, as quoted by Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, Viking Press, New York, 1974, ISBN 0-670-41374-7.
About

Life

“The papers inclosed will shew that the nauseous project of amendments has not yet been either dismissed or despatched. We are so deep in them now, that right or wrong some thing must be done.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Richard Peters (19 August 1789)
1780s

“Get it down quickly, don't worry about the background. Just go for the tonal values. You see? When you look at it, and above all when you see how to render it as you see it, thats is, in such a way that its make the same impression on the viewer as it does on you, you don't look for, you don't see the lines on the paper over there, do you? And then, when you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't thats right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl. And the grapes, now do you count each? No, of course not. What strikes you is their clear, amber colour and the bloom which models the form by softening it. What you have to decide with the cloth is where the highlights come and then the planes which are not in the direct light. Halftones are for the magasin pittoresque engravers. The folds will come by themselves if you put them in the proper place. Ah! M. Ingres, there's the man! We're all just children. There's the one who knew how to paint materials! Ask Bracquemond [Paris' artist and print-maker]. Above all, keep your colours fresh. [instructing his new protegee, the Spanish young woman-painter Eva Gonzales, circa 1869]”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Manet, recorded by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52
1850 - 1875

Children, Way, Light, Appearance

“All of that to gain a piece of paper, that minimally guarantees a job of stability, a job where one follows a daily routine and gets a monthly salary, and a job, in my opinion, of sheer boredom and unhappiness. And they with the piece of paper, claiming that they have faired better in their lives, compared to fellow hawkers and construction workers. But I retort, at least they didn’t spend up to 10 years in a place they didn’t like, filling their brains with knowledge they never wanted. Some people say it’s a life they want, not for me. Some people they say it is worth going to school for over 10 years for such a life, no it isn’t.”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Tumblr postings

Life, People, School, Knowledge

“In order to write all a man needs is paper and a pencil. Furthermore, when a thing has been written, it is written forever. When it is printed, nothing can stop it from being printed again and again if the thing wants to be printed again and again. I must therefore be a writer.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“But the Japanese paper was what I loved, and now, so many years later, when I see some exquisitely laid piece of calligraphy by a student of Ogata Korin in a museum, I think first not of the spiritualized handwork of Momoyama Japan, but of those long evenings in the family garage with Dad, smoothing and stretching the refined wing coverings of those planes.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Love, Family, Thinking

“When I was hired they showed me my desk, an old beat-up scarred wooden desk, and they told me that it had been O. Henry’s desk when O. Henry worked for the paper, as he had at one time. And I readily believed it. I could see the place where O. Henry had savagely stabbed the desk with his pen in pursuit of a slimy adjective just out of reach, and a kind of bashed-in-looking place where O. Henry had beaten his poor genius head on the desk in frustration over not being able to capture the noun leaping like a fawn just out of reach… So I sat down at the desk and I too began to chase those devils, the dancy nouns and come-hither adjectives, what joy.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“Return”, p. 55.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Time, Joy

“He's a meticulously hard worker and yet he'll roam the grass of his farm for hours and sometimes for days before he can bring himself to put a word on paper.”

Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals

Richard Rodgers, quoted in Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, 2007-12-12, 2004 http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/rodgers_hammerstein.html, <br class="br">About

Grass

“A patent is a legal analog of sticky fly paper: it attracts some of the lowest forms of life.”

David L. Webster (1888–1976) American Physicist

in his autobiography, as quoted by [Peter Louis Galison, Bruce William Hevly, Big science: the growth of large-scale research, Stanford University Press, 1992, 0804718792, 55]

Life, Flying

“Early every morning a van calls to take his brief bag up to the Parliament House, where his papers are trustingly displayed in his box in the public corridor of the Courts and whence they are brought home again after the day's work.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 44

Home, Housing, Box

“I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“I was very conscience that if you put even your toe on this very sticky piece of paper, then you would be caught on it.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

On her initial decision not to disclose details of her final meeting with Rudd, prior to challenging him for the Labor Party leadership in June 2010.
The Killing Season, Episode three: The Long Shadow (2010–13)

“[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics.”

Leonard Jimmie Savage (1917–1971) American mathematician

Leonard Jimmie Savage in 1960s; cited in: JOC/EFR (2006) " George Edward Pelham Box http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Box.html" at history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk, Nov 2006.

Problem, Help, Box

“Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 449
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

Secret

“Ingres was one of those artists to whom the outline was something sacred and magical, and the reason is that it was the means of reconciling the major conflict in his art, the conflict between abstraction and sensibility. The difference between what we see and a sheet of white paper with a few thin lines on it is very great. Yet this abstraction is one which we seem to have adopted almost instinctively at an early stage in our development not only in Neolithic graffiti but in early Egyptian drawings. And in spite of its abstract character, the outline is responsive to the least tremor of sensibility.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 4: Ingres I: The Years of Inspiration

Art, Drawing

“If there is one idea that has dominated the history of the United States, it is the idea of progress. Yet analyses of this idea are surprisingly rare. Furthermore, in spite of having been founded by a rather small revolution, the dominant dynamic of the United States has been evolutionary, through social mutation (invention), production, and selection. In this paper, therefore, I propose to look at the larger question of the nature of evolutionary change, and the conditions under which change can be identified as progress.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding et all. (1978) From Abundance to Scarcity Implications for the American Tradition https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/6209/FROM_ABUNDANCE_TO_SCARCITY_IMPLICATIONS_FOR_THE_AMERICA.pdf?sequence=1 <br class="br">1970s

History, Idea, Question, Nature

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People, Nature, Thinking, Parting

“The daily expenditures by consumers for new consumers' goods, upon which business stability largely depends, are determined in part by the total volume of money in circulation, in part by other factors including the frequency with which that money is returned to consumers. The flow of money, therefore, from use in consumption to another use in consumption should not be overlooked in studies of the causes and conditions of business fluctuations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe certain aspects of this circuit flow of money, to raise the question whether it does not deserve more attention that it has yet received in our analyses of business cycles, and to suggest pertinent lines of investigation. Unfortunately, the statistics upon which the most important conclusions concerning this subject must be based are not at hand and are not likely to be for a long time to come. The following discussion will have served its purpose if it stimulates further inquiry in profitable directions and helps to hasten the day when the necessary statistics are available.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: The circuit flow of money, 1922, p. 460; Early descriptions of the circular flow of income

Money, Question, Business, Study

“Any thought which is printed, either here or in the paper, without subsequent attack is generally believed to be true. This is not so much a logical condition as it is a fault of human nature. A longstanding or constant idea is often equated with a true one.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 9 “A Moral Dilemma” (p. 140).

Idea, Nature

“Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Excerpt from Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II, To the Reader (Prefatory Remarks).
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Life, Pain, Age, Fear

“Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Waste-Paper Baskets
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

“Madame Prime Minister [Indira Gandhi] do not mislead the house or the Honorable Member. The speaker has no hand to sending the Members of Parliament. He only comes to know from the news papers the next day as to which delegation is going outside the country. It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has unnecessarily dragged the name of the speaker in the matter.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

His retort to Indira Gandhi’s reply “Sir, the names are selected by the Speaker, and the names which are selected by the speaker are sent as delegation outside the country” in response to a Member’s question “Mr. Speaker, I have been a Member of Parliament for quite a long time; Prime Minister has never sent me in any delegation so far; those who lick her feet they are sent in the delegation outside the country in: Dr. Janak Raj Jai "Presidents of India, 1950-2003", p. 130

Housing, Country

“The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck; it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)

Change

“Show me your little poem
and I'll tell you why it wasn't written
any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong.
Keep your funny piece of paper
with its scribbles.
All I need for my ends
is your layer of dirt
and the long gone
smell of burning.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

“The paper is breathless
Under the hand
And the pencil is poised
Like a warlock's wand.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Poem in The Glassblowers (1950)

“One of the reasons I was asked to do the portrait [of president J. F. Kennedy, winter of 1962–63, destined for the Truman Library, Independence, Mo] is that, with luck, I can start and finish a life-size portrait in one sitting (after a couple of preliminary sessions of sketches to determine the pose and familiarize myself with my impression of the sitter). After years of working on my portraits (mostly of friends) for months at a time, I found myself getting bogged down in overly conscientious effort and discovered that by working swiftly I could enter into an almost passive relationship to the canvas and get closer to the essential gesture of the sitter. However, working at top speed this way, I require the absolute immobility of the sitter. This was impossible with President Kennedy because of his extreme restlessness: he read papers, talked on the phone, jotted down notes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, shifted from one arm of the chair to another, always in action at rest. So I had to find a new approach.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

n.p.
1950 - 1971, Painting a Portrait of the President', Elaine de Kooning (1964)

Life, Way, Effort, Winter

“We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man.
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand.
We got department stores
And toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
For the ozone layer.
Got a man of the people,
Says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
Got roads to drive.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Rockin' in the Free World
Song lyrics, Freedom (1989)

People, Hope, Light, Box

“.. by going on drawing those types of working people, etc., I hope to arrive at the point of being able to do illustration work for papers and books.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to brother Theo, from Brussels, Belgium (January 1881, letter 140); as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 19 <br class="br">being art student in Brussels <br class="br">1880s, 1881

People, Books, Hope, Drawing

“"Devilling", properly so called, by which is designated in England the system whereby a young barrister assists a busy counsel by digesting and annotating his papers, looking up authorities, drafting opinions, and sometimes holding his brief for him in Court, is not know and indeed is not permitted in Scotland.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 26

Business

“In 1915 Sophie Taeuber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper [without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting]. These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

on creating art without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting, in The Art of Jean Arp, Herbert Read, Abrams, New York 1968, p. p. 34, 38
1960s

Color, Nature, Reality, Past

“I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

From his film True Stories

People, Color, Way, Forgetting

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.”

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American aviation pioneer and author

The Official Website of Amelia Earhart - Quotes http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/quotes.html

Wise, Life, Fear, Decision

“There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. … However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories.”

Christian Doppler (1803–1853) mathematician, physicist

in his review of Joseph Beskiba's textbook, published in the Österreichische Blätter für Literatur und Kunst (September 7, 1844), as quoted by [Peter Schuster, Moving the stars: Christian Doppler, his life, his works and principle, and the world after, Living edition, 2005, 3901585052, 78]

Age, Science

Quotes about paper page 3

Quotes about paper
page 3