Quotes about working
page 23

“I seriously needed an extra-strength magic pillow, because my ba refused to stay put. [And no, Sadie, I don't think wrapping my head in duct tape would've worked either. ]”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Thinking

“I have no pity for myself either. So let it be veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.”

Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Doctor Sheppard
Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

“This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Children, Age

“It takes two people to make a friendship work”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Friendship, People

“After I shut the door behind me, I heard Darryl say "of course eating him would work too.”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

“But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”

Jodi Picoult Perfect Match

Source: Perfect Match

Life, Law, Motivation

“What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Hope, Optimism, Dead

“I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Letter to Ed White (5 July 1950) as published in The Missouri Review, Vol. XVII, No. 3, 1994, page 137, and also quoted in Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p. 117

Money, Understanding, Fish

“And right when your song ended I knew - just like your mother - I was a goner," Peeta says. "Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Happy, Perfection, Motivational

“That's how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It recreates some forgotten terror. Something we'd like to think we're grown beyond. But it can still scare us to tears. It's something you'd hoped was healed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 19, Hot Potting, A story by Baroness Frostbite

Fear, Hope, Thinking, Tear

“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.”

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

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Death

“Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Thirteen: Frankfurt, Door, Independent Operants

People, Bird, Sleep, Singing

“Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Understanding

“I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Funny

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Love, Life, Color, Drink

“Hardly anyone still reads nowadays. People make use of the writer only in order to work off their own excess energy on him in a perverse manner, in the form of agreement or disagreement.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

Source: The Man Without Qualities

People, Reading

“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Way, Time

“Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Loneliness

“I’d signed six things and my stack wasn’t getting any smaller. It was like the paperwork was breeding while I worked.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

“This is going to be a really long couple of months if we worry about ever little twinge."

"You just tried to throw up your liver."

"I did not."

So you were working on your pancreas?”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: The King

“Seth hustled over. “What’s the password?”
“Passwords are for sissies,” Warren’s muffled voice responded.
“Works for me,” Seth said, unlocking the door and opening it.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

God

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Feeling, Strong

“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Life

“I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Watermelon

Life, Personality

“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Country

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

As quoted in "Works in Progress" in The New York Times Book Review (15 July 1979), page BR1

Hell

“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Life

“But she's not, and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention?”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Guy

“The public wants work which flatters its illusions.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

“Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Love

“We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Books

“The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out but I'm glad I had them.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Dreams

“If you're a nobody, if your work has no impact, then it deserves to be praised. If, however, you climb out of that state of mediocrity and are a success, then your defying 'the law' and deserve to be punished.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Law, Success

“There's no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It's better than just accepting the broken.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)

World, Fools

“But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Study, Night

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Angels, Problem, Effort, Victory

“No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Dreams, Understanding

“Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Happiness

“It's easier to start over than to work to make something last.”

Rachel Hawthorne (1950) American author

Source: Thrill Ride

“Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Motivation

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Joy of Children (1966)

Motivational, Secret, Joy

“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Love, Patience

“Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Time

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

For Team, Imagination

“Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness… and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

God, Evil

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

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

Back To Work

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it”

Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) writer and economist

“Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Dreams, Art, Soul

“We tried it again and it didn't work out. Sour milk is always sour milk. When something goes bad it stays bad. You don't put sour milk in the refrigerator one day, and take it out the next and expect it to taste sweet.”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Thieves' Paradise

“Maybe the point is that any marriage is work, but you may as well pick work that you like.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Marriage

“Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.”

Mohsin Hamid book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Source: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

People, Thinking

“Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.”

Rebecca Stead (1968) American children's writer

Time, Forgetting

“Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Training

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 151

Men

“Woman work a great many miracles.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Some of the most relaxing weekends I have ever enjoyed were those I spent quietly with a sense of all work to date completed, and an absorbing mystery.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Letters from Burma

Source: Letters from Burma

Sense

“Broken hearts healed. Maybe the cracks were always there, like thin scars, but they healed. People lived and worked, laughed and ate, walked and talked with those cracks

For many, even the scars healed and they loved again.”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

Love, People, Heart

“Worry about the things you can control; the rest will either work themselves out, or they'll kill you. Either way, no more worries.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bloody Bones

Source: Bloody Bones

Way

“Smirking, he says, "Whatever spell you just tried to cast on me, it didn't work, so I think you need to go back to Hogwarts.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Back To Work, Thinking

“For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Life, Men, Books, Age

“If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.”

Jasper Fforde book The Big Over Easy

Source: The Big Over Easy

Hate, Art, Passion, Science

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Communication, Effort

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love, Life

“There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Back To Work, Joy, Happiness

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Star

“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Art, Music, Silence, Dance

“It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor, always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.

-Hephaestus”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

People, Personality

“It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Reality, Heart, Sea

“But even a ninety-year-old blind priest would stop and stare at this woman. If he weren’t blind, that is. Dumb metaphor, I thought. I’ll have to work on that one. I have trouble with metaphors.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“But for one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.”

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

Health, Flowers

“There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot… I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.”

Phyllis A. Whitney (1903–2008) American writer

Money, Home, Success, Help

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Paris Review Interview (1986)
Context: You ask if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book — if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction.

Change

“If it works, it works,' Kat told him.
'And if it doesn't?' he asked.
She looked at him. 'If it doesn't, then I've heard Monaco has the nicest prisons in all of Europe.'
'It does,' both Hamish and Angus said in unison.
And with that, it was decided.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

“When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

People, World, Law

“… our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

Literature, Understanding, Dependency

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards”

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

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

God

“Percy: Dad-

Poseidon: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.

Percy: I'm praying, I'm talking to you, right?

Poseidon: Oh… yes. Good point.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Variant: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.
I am praying. I'm talking to you, right?
Oh... yes. Good point. Amphitrite - incoming!
Source: The Last Olympian

“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

“When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Feeling

“You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Love, Way, Hurt

“Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.”

Carl Hiaasen book Chomp

Source: Chomp

Tree, Dead

“There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

“V'lane: Are you busy tomorrow MacKayla?
Barrons: She's working on old texts with me.
V'lane: Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore.
Barrons: We're translating Kama Sutra… with interactive aids.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Business

“Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Beauty, Love, Life, Star

“All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet — it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Reddit IAmA (c. April 2012) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s2uh1/i_am_joss_whedon_ama/c4ao0m1

Back To Work, Art

“The key to power, then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Friendship

“No, this trick won't work. The same trick does not work twice. How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”

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

A comment to T. H. Morgan, as recalled by Henry Borsook. Einstein was visiting Cal Tech where Morgan and Borsook worked, and Morgan explained to Einstein that he was trying to bring physics and chemistry to bear on the problems of biology, to which Einstein gave this response. Borsook's recollection was published in Symposium on Structure of Enzymes and Proteins (1956), p. 284 http://books.google.com/books?id=H4QjXb4gnEIC&q=%22so+important+a+biological%22#search_anchor, as part of a piece titled "Informal remarks 'by way of a summary'". Context for this story is also given in The Molecular Vision of Life by Lily E. Kay (1993), p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=vEHeNI2a8OEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">Attributed in posthumous publications

Love

“And I envied her that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don't suppose I had any idea what I 'wanted' and so I was chosen, not choosing. There's glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Idea, Envy