Quotes about typewriter

A collection of quotes on the topic of typewriter, writing, likeness, use.

Quotes about typewriter

“"People die from typewriters falling on their heads." (talking about taking chances because you can die at any moment.)”

Jonathan Davis (1971) Heavy metal singer, frontman for Korn

People, Chance

“First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

World

“Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Variant: There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

“We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“BASIC is to computation what QWERTY is to typing. Many teachers have learned BASIC, many books have been written about it, many computers have been built in such a way that BASIC is "hardwired" into them. In the case of the typewriter, we noted how people invent "rationalizations" to justify the status quo. In the case of BASIC, the phenomenon has gone much further, to the point where it resembles ideology formation. Complex arguments are invented to justify features of BASIC that were originally included because the primitive technology demanded them or because alternatives were not well enough known at the time the language was designed.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 1, Computers and Computer Cultures

People, Books, Way, Learning

“From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It's just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Radio show assertions, reported in "Rush Limbaugh: Here’s way to stop 100% of lies in society" at American Grand Jury (19 January 2011) http://americangrandjury.org/rush-limbaugh-heres-way-to-stop-100-of-lies-in-society

Love, Hate

“People die from typewriters falling on their heads.”

Jonathan Davis (1971) Heavy metal singer, frontman for Korn

talking about taking chances because you can die at any moment.

People

“If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets… when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Source: Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Fools

“Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

Hope

“Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Love Poems

Love

“and sometimes I sit
down at my typewriter
and I think
not of someone
cause there isn't anyone
to think
about and i wonder
is it worth it”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Thinking

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

As quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50.

God

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Pleasure, Sleep

“I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.”

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

“clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“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

“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”

David Gerrold (1944) American screenwriter and novelist

Source: A Matter for Men

Fools

“take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Time, Daughters, Speed

“During the last few years it has become apparent that the concept of "machine" must be very greatly extended if it is to include the most modern developments. Especially is this true if we are studying the brain and attempting to identify the type of mechanism that is responsible for the brain’s outstanding powers of thought and action. It has become apparent that when we used to doubt whether the brain could be a machine, our doubts were due chieﬂy to the fact that by ‘‘machine’’ we understood some mechanism of very simple type. Familiar with the bicycle and the typewriter, we were in great danger of taking them as the type of all machines. The last decade, however, has corrected this error. It has taught us how restricted our outlook used to be; for it developed mechanisms that far transcended the utmost that had been thought possible, and taught us that ‘‘mechanism’’ was still far from exhausted in its possibilities. Today we know only that the possibilities extend beyond our farthest vision.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

W. Ross Ashby (1951), "Statistical Machinery". In: Thales Vol 7. p.1 as cited in: Peter M. Asaro (2008) " From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Ampliﬁers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf"

Error, Study

“I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“(Sylvia at typewriter) "Superwoman." The definition is 1. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to fight evil. 2. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to combine a family and a career.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 184

Family, Evil, Fight

“(Sylvia at typewriter) What is Newt Gingrich's Real Name? 1) Newton Minnow 2) Fig Newton 3) Isaac Newton 4) Wayne Newton”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 75

“Sometimes I think it sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.”

Gene Fowler (1890–1960) American journalist

Attributed without citation in Military Chaplains' Review, Chaplains, U.S. Army. (1981), p. 144

Thinking

“Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that paintin' in a cave
And there's a word I can't remember
and a feeling I cannot escape”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Feeling

“Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. "By Jesus I admit I'm stumped," he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), p. 365

Life, Night, Happiness

“This baby (the Remington SL3 typewriter) speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Baby

“I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

His reason for not pursuing a literary career
Unsourced

“He didn't need a psychiatrist to point out that writing had its autoerotic side — you beat a typewriter instead of your meat, but both acts depended largely on quick wits, fast hands and a heartfelt commitment to the art of the farfetched.”

Stephen King book Misery

Misery (1987)

Art, Dependency

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

International Herald Tribune (October 7, 1977)

“To me [Sydney Opera House] looks like a portable typewriter full of oyster shells, and to the contention that it echoes the sails of yachts on the harbour I can only point out that the yachts on the harbour don't waste any time echoing opera houses.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Postcard from Sydney'
Essays and reviews, Flying Visits (1984)

Time, Housing

“I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby — I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters… "Betrayal"… "Confrontation"… "Management"… My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Milne, Act I
Night and Day (1978)

Life, Death, God, Sex

“Oscar Williams’s new book is pleasanter and a little quieter than his old, which gave the impression of having been written on a typewriter by a typewriter.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

precedes by twelve years Truman Capote’s putdown of Jack Kerouac: “That isn’t writing at all, it’s typing.”; “from Verse Chronicle”, p. 137
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Books

“(Cartoon title) Don't throw that old diaphragm away! (Sylvia at typewriter) Because it can be used as: 1. Doorknob cover (no need to worry about fingerprints ever again) 2. Bathtub stopper 3) Rainhat for cat 4. Small frisbee.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 121

Cats

“An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“I had won notable victories on paper and the map with the aid of greaseproof pencils and a typewriter. In the course of this very campaign, if one may dignify the disaster thus, I had seen French generals create imaginary "masses of manoeuvre" with strokes of the crayon and dispose of hostile concentrations, that unahappily were on the ground as well as on the map, with sweeps of the eraser. Who was I to criticise them, hero as I was of a hundred "Chinagraph wars" of make-believe?”

Frederick E. Morgan (1894–1967) British Army general

Peace and War: A Soldier's Life (1961), p. 138

Hostility, War, Victory

“(Sylvia at typewriter) The best place to discuss your sexual dissatisfaction with your partner is 1) in the bedroom 2) in a car, traveling at high speed 3) in a crowded elevator.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 86

Cars, Travel, Speed

“On the day you officially join the organization, you will hear a noise outside your home. It may sound like the howl of a wolf, the chirping of a cricket, the engine of an automobile, the keys of a typewriter, the striking of a match, or the turning of a page. The noise will come in the middle of the night, the middle of the morning, or, in very rare cases, late in the afternoon. Ask your parents what the noise was. If they reply 'nothing,' they are replying in code, because there is never 'nothing' outside one's home. If you are interested in volunteering, answer your parents with the following question: 'If there's nothing out there, what was that noise?' We will be listening, and will know it is safe to act.”

Daniel Handler (1970) American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Snicket

V.F.D.
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002)

Home, Question, Parent, Wolf

“I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Come on, Big Boy — Let Me See Your Manuscript," review and interview by Herbert Gold, The New York Times (1987-08-02)

Loneliness

“Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damn fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the …”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Books, Fools

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Parting

“Mrs Thomas has promised me her typewriter, I'll take it now.”

John Bodkin Adams (1899–1983) general practitionar, fraudster and suspected serial killer

To Mrs Thomas' cook on 21 November 1952. The patient died the following night.

“I sat before my typewriter and the great awful void descended, and I beat my head with my fists, put a pillow under my aching buttocks and made little noises of agony.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“What we, thanks to Jung, call "synchronicity" (coincidence on steroids), Buddhists have long known as "the interpenetration of realities." Whether it's a natural law of sorts or simply evidence of mathematical inevitability (an infinite number of monkeys locked up with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing Hamlet, not to mention Tarzan of the Apes), it seems to be as real as it is eerie.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)

Law, Mathematics, Nature, Reality

“It sounds like typewriters eating tin foil being kicked down the stairs.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On the German language.
Like, Totally (2006)

“To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Future

“When I saw a policeman strolling toward me I walked away. It was a hot night. Sand from the Mojave had blown across the city. Tiny brown grains of sand clung to my fingertips whenever I touched anything, and when I got back to my room I found the mechanism of my new typewriter glutted with sand. It was in my ears and in my hair. When I took off my clothes it fell like powder to the floor. It was even between the sheets of my bed. Lying in the darkness, the red light from the St. Paul Hotel flashing on and off across my bed was bluish now, a ghastly color jumping into the room and out again.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Color, Lying, Light, Clothes

“My first serious programming work was done in the very early 1960s, in Assembler languages on IBM and Honeywell machines. Although I was a careful designer — drawing meticulous flowcharts before coding — and a conscientious tester, I realised that program design was hard and the results likely to be erroneous. Into the Honeywell programs, which formed a little system for an extremely complex payroll, I wrote some assertions, with run-time tests that halted program execution during production runs. Time constraints didn't allow restarting a run from the beginning of the tape. So for the first few weeks I had the frightening task on several payroll runs of repairing an erroneous program at the operator’s keyboard ¾ correcting an error in the suspended program text, adjusting the local state of the program, and sometimes modifying the current and previous tape records before resuming execution. On the Honeywell 400, all this could be done directly from the console typewriter. After several weeks without halts, there seemed to be no more errors. Before leaving the organisation, I replaced the run-time halts by brief diagnostic messages: not because I was sure all the errors had been found, but simply because there would be no-one to handle a halt if one occurred. An uncorrected error might be repaired by clerical adjustments; a halt in a production run would certainly be disastrous.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Michael A. Jackson (2000), "The Origins of JSP and JSD: a Personal Recollection", in: IEEE Annals of Software Engineering, Volume 22 Number 2, pages 61-63, 66, April-June 2000.

Error, Time, Drawing

“The Romans are very equivocal about this building. They call it the typewriter or the wedding cake… But whatever you think of it -- it gives you the most amazing views of Rome. It's like a box at the theatre at which Rome is the play.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Belly of An Architect

Thinking, Wedding, Box

“(Sylvia at typewriter) Common misunderstandings of young married couples. (Young husband to tearful wife) Jeannie, when I said that your dinner tasted like airplane food, that was meant as a compliment.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 55

Food, Tear

“I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Frenzy"
The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)

God, Wolf, Heart

“She walked over to my desk and pulled a page out of the typewriter. I didn't know what was happening. I still said nothing, but I could smell liquor on her breath, and then the very peculiar but distinctive odor of decay, sweetish and cloying, the odor of oldness, the odor of this woman in the process of growing old.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“(Sylvia at typewriter) For feminine protection, every day use a hand grenade.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 112

“Marina was about eight years older than my sister Tencha, so this made her about eighteen years older than me. She was presently a reporter for the New York Times. When she was in high school, she’d won the Underwood Typewriter typing contest, doing well over a hundred words a minute without a single mistake, setting a national record. She attributed her fast hands to her cotton-picking days as a young girl in Scottsdale, Arizona.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

School, Girl, Sister, Time

“Nobody ever wrote so well so fast as Jim. One year he wrote, and we published, nine novels. It was an obsession. Back in 1941, his father had been in an asylum in Oklahoma City, begging Jim to get him out. Jim needed money to get him out, so he said to his father, "Give me a month, and I'll raise the money." His father brightened, because Jim never went back on his word. Jim took a bus to New York City and went door to door to the publishing houses, asking for money for a hotel room, a rented typewriter and meals so he could write a novel. Finally, at Modern Age, they took a chance, and in 10 days he wrote a novel. But things being what they are in publishing, it was a month plus one day before Jim got his advance. The same day, a telegram arrived. His father had committed suicide, ripping the excelsior out of his mattress and stuffing it down his throat. When Jim would drink he would sometimes cry and say, "Why couldn't he have waited another day? Didn't he trust me?"”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Jim Thompson, 1906 - 1977," in The Los Angeles Times (May 1, 1977), p. X3
Other Topics

Money, Age, Drink, Suicide

“Art has poisoned our life. Aesthetics has infected everyone… If one chooses a typewriter or a sewing machine in the living room, the housewife say: 'Please take it away; it destroys the harmony of the room'. Post-cards, stamps, pouches, railway-tickets, pots umbrellas, towels, pyamas, chairs, blankets, handkerchiefs and ties – everything is 'arty'. How much more refreshing are those articles which are not called art: bathrooms, bath-tubs, bicycles, automobiles, engine-rooms and flat-irons. There are still people who can make beautiful things without art. They are the progressives.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote of Van Doesburg in his article: 'The end of art'; in 'De Stijl' series XII, 1924-5, pp. 135–136
1920 – 1926

Life, People, Beauty, Art

“To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Way

“He wrote his mother that he had begun to hate the sight of his typewriter.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 9, Epiphany, p. 131

Hate

“It has been suggested that an army of monkeys might be trained to pound typewriters at random in the hope that ultimately great works of literature would be produced. Using a coin for the same purpose may save feeding and training expenses and free the monkeys for other monkey business.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VIII, Unlimited Sequences Of Bernoulli Trials, p. 202.

Hope, Literature, Business, Training

“(Sylvia at typewriter) I feel much lighter now that I've given up my civil liberties. I recommend it to everyone!”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 94

Feeling

“(Sylvia at typewriter) On Getting Old in America. By Sylvia. Page One. 1. Best to do it somewhere else.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 32

“Nothing I have ever written was given the slightest deliberation. It was there in the typewriter and it came out, a total bypassing of the brain.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

In a 1980 interview with Jean W. Ross, published in Contemporary Authors Vol. 104 (1982)

“(Sylvia at typewriter) In the heat of the moment, I said a lot of unforgiveable things. Please call me. I've thought of a few more.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 148

“Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder — and turn quickly to my typewriter.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

On incentive as a journalist, quoted by Rosamund Essex Church Times (December 30, 1983)

“Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper… sharp pencils… typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk… roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter… and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.”

Jeff MacNelly (1947–2000) American cartoonist

Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk, in Shoe

Appearance

“When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Kurt Vonnegut" (1983)
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

Life, Success

“(Sylvia at typewriter) A lady never offers a new lover a complimentary tooth brush, razor and sewing kit the next morning.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 123

Lovers

“(Woman at typewriter) Dear Syl,... Is nothing forever? (Sylvia) Red wine on a white couch.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 111

Wine

“I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics. Stan could write on three typewriters at once! I wrote the Human Torch, Submariner. I worked my way down. I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics. I went downhill class-wise, but I went uphill, money-wise! I was making more money in the comics. I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Money, Books, Way, Guy

“A journalist who has to borrow a typewriter is bad news.”

Alan Williams (novelist) (1935) novelist

Toomey, Philippa. "Tilting at windmills", London Times, 8 July 1978, p. 12.

“You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
Context: You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it’s happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization … and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim.

Children, Girl, Support, Reading

“He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver, the radio, the money, and the typewriter were all on the same level of value, all meant the same thing to him. They were the serious toys of the men who lived in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left, the world that had condemned him, branded him guilty.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Eight Men (1961)

Men, Money, World, Feeling

“His weapon was the typewriter, He loved putting up the drafts of the ideology, which was a group consensus.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Lee Kuan Yew

Love, Making love

“When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Personality, Life, Age, Country