Quotes about writing (5027 quotes, page 31)

“In dealing with its subject, [this book] exercises complete fidelity to truth; unlike secularist and Marxist writers, it does not believe in re-writing and fabricating history. Its aim is to raise the informational level of our people and to make them better aware of the more persistent ideological forces at work.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

People , Truth , Books , Exercises

“Some of you may doubt the truth of what I now say, and argue that the Lord could teach him. This is a mistake. The Lord could not have taught him in any other way than in the way in which He did teach him. You believe Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe, though it is supposed that it is so written in the Bible; but it is not, to my understanding. You can write that information to the States, if you please-that I have publicly declared that I do not believe that portion of the Bible as the Christian world do. I never did, and I never want to. What is the reason I do not? Because I have come to understanding, and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child. But suppose Adam was made and fashioned the same as we make adobies; if he had never drunk of the bitter cup; the Lord might have talked to him to this day, and he would have continued as he was to all eternity, never advancing one particle in the school of intelligence. This idea opens up a field of light to the intelligent mind. How can you know truth but by its opposite, or light but by its opposite? The absence of light is darkness. How can sweetness be known but by its opposite, bitter? It is by this means that we obtain all intelligence.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourse 2:6-7 (October 23, 1853)
1850s

Truth , World , School , Way

“In Luther's writings concerning Law and Gospel, he had already observed concerning the phrase, "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.." "This is purest Gospel." In other words, the structure of the Christian faith is identical to that of the original biblical covenant, and both are similar to the ways of thinking in ecumenical world politics at the time of Moses: that obedience to a set of stipulations is the required result of gratitude for benefits that have already been received. It is a matter of cause and effect, not simply an arbitrary command.This is the structure of the original Old Testament and of New Testament religious ethics. This contrasts in the sharpest possible way to the attitudes and tactics of far too many religious zealots of the present world, who are determined to use the force of law to compel people to act in accordance with their concept of divine commands. This in turn is one of the major causes of the widespread antipathy to religion that is growing in the modern world, and of the desecration of the name of God.Thus, the misunderstanding of ancient covenants has led to the distortion of the ten commitments of faith into commandments, usually of some human authority.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Our Misunderstood Bible (2006)

God , People , World , Faith

“Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Anna (1814-09-28) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

People , Fear , Business , Help

“Good writing is lean and confident.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 13, Bits & Pieces, p. 114.

Confidence

“With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;—he did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

Books , Learning

“Why am I compelling to write? Because te writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appaese my appetites and hunger.”

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004) Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory

Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers, from This Bridge Called My Back

Life , Hunger , World , Fear

“Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Address to the Prague World Congress of International PEN Club (7 November 1994) http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/wipcnews/peninternationaldeeplysaddenedbydeathofvclavhavelaconstantchampionforfreedomofexpression/

World , Feeling

“The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: ‘Who wrote it, and when?’ ‘How did they know what to write?’ ‘Did they, in their time really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?’ ‘Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?’.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 118 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

People , Understanding , Question , Time

“If you have to do something, write me a funny AIDS play. Sure you can. It's the biggest joke played on us since sex itself - and with the longest punch line.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

Pouf Positive
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Sex

“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

“We're really not very good about putting music in a social and political context, particularly classical music. It's all sort of above everything. But in South Africa, everything is politicised. You play a piece of classical music out there and you are making a real cultural statement. Or you play with a marimba band and you are saying something else. I think that's the way things should be. The way people write about music makes it seem completely devoid of social context. And audiences drift away as a result.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Financial Times, 11/11/1999
On Classical Music

People , Music , Way , Thinking

“Today summoned painfully to earth by a short fat English magician with a dangerous stammer*.
*Dangerous because any verbal hiccup while giving me my orders would break my bonds and uncage my savage wrath. Ooh, gave myself a bit of a shiver writing that. That's literary talent.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Bart's Journal

“The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Essays, On Authorship and Style

Way

“This is a nature-boy movie, a kid's daydream of being an Indian. When Dunbar has become a Sioux named Dances with Wolves, he writes in his journal that he knows for the first time who he really is. Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head.”

Pauline Kael book Movie Love

"New Age Daydreams," review of Dances with Wolves (1990-12-17), p. 295.
Movie Love (1991)

Boy , Nature , Time , Dance

“They are not identical. The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept. Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation. And XML is not just another way of writing S-exps. There are some things in life that you do not do if you want to be a moral being and feel proud of what you have accomplished.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing) http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Life , Way , Feeling

“I think any music of any worth has been done by people who were very interested in the internal process of their soul and their mind that's taking place while they're writing music.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "The Heart is a Drum Machine" Documentary

People , Music , Soul , Thinking

“It naturally follows that the creature you love next best is the person — the God-lover or God-hater (almost never, apparently, anything in between), the saint or profligate, moralist or complete immoralist — who can write a poem that is a poem.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Love , God , Lovers , Nature

“I was asked by thousands of people if I was going to write a book. A lot of them had shared in my story, and in ways I don't quite understand, they had found it helpful.”

Lauren Manning (1961) American banker

Survivor Lauren Manning finds 'new normal' after 9/11 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2011-08-29/Survivor-Lauren-Manning-finds-new-normal-after-911/50182388/1, USA Today, 29 August 2011

People , Books , Way , Understanding

“The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Preface To The first edition, p. ix
The Political Economy Of Growth (1957)

Hope , Intelligence , Learning

“When Voltaire was bornreally but one church which, of course, was ignorant, tyrannical and barbarous in the extreme. All creeds are alike, and whenever there is but one, and the rulers honestly believe in that one, they are bound to be ignorant, barbarous and cruel. All sorts of heresies were punishable by death. If anyone dared to write a pamphlet or book that questioned any part of the accepted faith, the book was at once consigned to flames and the author was lucky if he did not meet the same fate. Religion was not maintained by the precepts of the priest, but by the prison, the torture chamber and the fagot. Everyone believed; no one questioned. The religious creeds, while strict and barbarous, did not interfere with the personal conduct of any of the rulers. They were left free to act as they pleased, so long as they professed to believe in the prevailing faith.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Death , Fate , Books , Faith

“Rather by instinct than by guidance, he turned to writing, and his professors or tutors occasionally gave his English composition a hesitating approval; but in that branch, as in all the rest, even when he made a long struggle for recognition, he never convinced his teachers that his abilities, at their best, warranted placing him on the rank-list, among the first third of his class. Instructors generally reach a fairly accurate gauge of their scholars' powers.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Gauge , Teachers

“Women write crime better than men do. Men tend to play it safe, relying on an old-boy's network (to get work). Women feel freer. They swing for the bleachers.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Quoted in The New York Times , December 30, 2008, Onstage, Tackling Ambition and Crime: On Writers.

Women , Men , Feeling , Boy

“… Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business: heaps of material are strewn every where; but they lie in disorder, unread, uncatalogued, unknown. It seems a dreary waste of life to be analysing, indexing, extracting works and passages, in which one per cent of the contents are interesting, and not half of that per centage will ultimately appear in the flowing narrative.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[ART. I—Edward Gibbon, National Review, 2, January 1856, 1–42, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081643169;view=1up;seq=41] (quote p. 29)
Edward Gibbon (1856)

Life , People , Lie , Books

“I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite spruce. … The deer love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains and see.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

[Concerning the Hemlock Spruce, now called Mountain Hemlock http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=TSME:]
Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 8: The Forests

Love , Lie , Beauty , Mountain

“I don't want to change my music, but I like to play around with my style of music. I've always been a big fan of guitars. The beats are still quite hard and the riffs are still Basshunter, but I wanted to do something special. The lyrics are from a true story as well. It's based on me dating a girl who I thought was the one, but it didn't work out. I woke up one morning and she was doing something in the kitchen and then came through with a cup of coffee for me. I just went, 'Wow! I have to write a song now!”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Bass Generation

Music , Girl , Coffee , Change

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life , God , Way , Reality

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif quoted in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Age

“the phrases that I write on this paper are sensations, perceptions, images, etcetera, which flare up and die down here, in front of my eyes, the verbal residuum:
the only thing that remains of the felt, imagined, thought, perceived, and vanished realities, the only reality that these evaporated realities leave behind, a reality that, even though it is merely a combination of signs, is no less real than they are:
the signs are not presences but they configure another presence, the phrases fall into line one after the other on the page and as they advance they open up a path toward a temporarily final end,
the phrases configure a presence that disappears, they are the configuration of the abolition of presence,
yes, it is as though all these presences woven by the configurations of the signs were seeking its abolition in order that there might appear those inaccessible trees, immersed in themselves, not said, that are beyond the end of this phrase,
on the other side, there where eyes read what I am writing, and on reading it, dissipate it”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Imagination , Reality , Tree , Appearance

“There cannot be a greater error than to suppose that the poet does not feel what he writes. What an extraordinary, I might say, impossible view, is this to take of an art more connected with emotion than any of its sister sciences. What — the depths of the heart are to be sounded, its mysteries unveiled, and its beatings numbered by those whose own heart is made by this strange doctrine — a mere machine wound up by the clock-work of rhythm! No; poetry is even more a passion than a power, and nothing is so strongly impressed on composition as the character of the writer. I should almost define poetry to be the necessity of feeling strongly in the first instance, and the as strong necessity of confiding in the second.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Art , Error , Feeling , Confidence

“There were thousands of moving messages. People sent money from their first month’s salary. Others said: This is my retirement payment—take it. This is the money for my next pair of shoes—take it. It was very important for me to see and hear those things. Normally you do not see the warmth, humor, care and generosity of the people while writing a blog. You just feel like you are walking in a dark tunnel and you feel alone.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

Money , People , Shoe , Feeling

“I have concentrated thus far on one aspect of achievement: the creation of a theory or theories, which in some form pass into the standard usage of economists. But with Keynes, and with other economists, theories were not the whole story. Keynes was also an applied economist using the existing body of theory in conjunction with the available facts of the world to try to shape certain outcomes, be they the international monetary system in 1931–2 or 1941–6, or the financial policy of the British Government in 1915, 1929–33 or 1940–6. And shape them he did with some success through various forms of private and public persuasion. How he did so and why he did so are also subjects for historians of economics, not to mention biographers, who may in the process of writing a biography have acquired additional perspectives.”

Donald Moggridge (1943) American economic historian

Preface
Maynard Keynes: An Economists' Biography (1992)

World , Success

“It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian; authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. […] If I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,—namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phaedrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations…”

Joseph Warton (1722–1800) English literary critic

An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. II (1782), pp. 21–24

Truth , Youth , Beauty , Nature

“The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 165
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Life , God , Intelligence , Idea

“Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants' Ball or even write a book, if that's what they want to do.”

Thornton Wilder book Theophilus North

Theophilus North (1973)

Books , Imagination , Memory , Drawing

“Of obvious appeal to the humourless is the writer who comes on stage in a clown outfit or King Kong suit, with party hat and harem slippers, with banana skins and custard pies… It remains a sound rule that funny journalism can only flourish as the offshoot or sideline of something larger. No funny journalist who is that and nothing more will ever write anything lastingly funny.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Best of Modern Humour edited by Mordecai Richler, p. 364
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

“Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

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

Books , Drink , Dependency

“It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Remarks on The Birth of a Nation attributed to Wilson by writer Thomas Dixon, after White House screening of the film, which was based on Dixon's The Clansman. Wilson later said that he disapproved of the "unfortunate film." Wilson aide Joseph Tumulty, in a letter to the Boston branch of the NAACP in response to reports of Wilson's regard for the film wrote: The President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it.
Misattributed

History

“Outside it had begun to rain, a fine mist of a rain: fall leaves were plastered to the walkway, and puddles filled with bits of hay and coal lay in the street. A nice bit to remember for the writing. Water Street! He loved to look at it.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 72

Love , Water

“I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Kitchen Confidential (2000)

Secret , Suffering , Summer , Cooking

“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might…travel.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
The Real Thing (1982)

Way , Travel , Idea , Dance

“I haven't found it difficult because I find this very enjoyable. It's really challenging. And I'm really proud of the record because it's a really good record. There's nothing harder than to write a pop record with meaning. I think it's much easier to be alternative. It's much easier to be different and take a different path outside of a commercial context. To try and write a pop song that is not cliché, to try and write a pop song that has meaning and fits in under three minutes and five seconds and has a hook that people want to listen to is the most difficult thing in the world to do. So in lieu of that you have to write what you know and what you like, what you're feeling. That's all I can basically do. I don't begrudge the other people that don't write their songs. And I don't judge them. I'd like to see more people writing their own songs, because that's just personally what I like. Just for me, as an artist, so many people only care about being popular right now. Whatever happened to trying to write a song that means something? When I was growing up, artists meant something. They had opinions, they looked different than the person working at the store on your street. They opened your eyes and taught you something about life. And I would like to aspire to be that kind of artist.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

When asked about writing her own music
Attributed

Life , People , World , Feeling

“Jesus himself could not perform miracles where the people had not faith beforehand, and when sensible men, the learned and rulers of those times, demanded of him a miracle which could be submitted to examination, he, instead of granting the request, began to upbraid them; so that no man of this stamp could believe in him. It was not until thirty to sixty years after the death of Jesus, that people began to write an account of the performance of these miracles, in a language which the Jews in Palestine did not understand. And this was at a time when the Jewish nation was in a state of the greatest disquietude and confusion, and when very few of those who had known Jesus were still alive. Nothing then was easier for them than to invent as many miracles as they pleased, without fear of their writings being readily understood or refuted. It had been impressed upon all converts from the beginning that it was both advantageous and soul-saving to believe, and to put the mind captive under the obedience of faith; and consequently there was as much credulity among them as there was "pia fraud" or "deception from good motives" among their teachers; and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, pp. 73–74

Death , Men , People , Fear

“We were tired of writing music that sounded like everybody else, and we were stuck in this rut for so long of just trying to emulate our favorite bands. We're just going to write stuff that feels good, sounds good. And if other people don't like it, oh well. Then we remembered Bert from just playing shows with his band. So we gave him a call and he happened to not be in any bands. The timing was like perfect.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Branden Steineckert, former drummer for The Used, on recruiting McCracken to the band, reported in Alan Sculley (July 4, 2003) "Getting used to reality", The Columbian, p. F9.
About

People , Music , Feeling , Time

“A fifty-seven-year-old college professor expressed it this way: "Yes, there's a need for male lib and hardly anyone writes about it the way it really is, though a few make jokes. My gut reaction, which is what you asked for, is that men—the famous male chauvinist pigs who neglect their wives, underpay their women employees, and rule the world—are literally slaves. They're out there picking that cotton, sweating, swearing, taking lashes from the boss, working fifty hours a week to support themselves and the plantation, only then to come back to the house to do another twenty hours a week rinsing dishes, toting trash bags, writing checks, and acting as butlers at the parties. It's true of young husbands and middleaged husbands. Young bachelors may have a nice deal for a couple of years after graduating, but I've forgotten, and I'll never again be young! Old men. Some have it sweet, some have it sour."Man's role—how has it affected my life? At thirty-five, I chose to emphasize family togetherness and income and neglect my profession if necessary. At fifty-seven, I see no reward for time spent with and for the family, in terms of love or appreciation. I see a thousand punishments for neglecting my profession. I'm just tired and have come close to just walking away from it and starting over; just research, publish, teach, administer, play tennis, and travel. Why haven't I? Guilt. And love. And fear of loneliness. How should the man's role in my family change? I really don't know how it can, but I'd like a lot more time to do my thing."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

In Harness: The Male Condition, pp. 6–7
The Hazards of Being Male (1976)

Love , Life , Women , Men

“So? If you don't like it, write your own [program].”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/10
About Code

“A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings — where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation — but in his personality.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

People , Time , Personality

“I think that the best science fiction is where the story is fiction but the science is real, or at least as real as possible. If you’re going to write a good sci-fi, and you want me to believe the one wholly implausible idea that your story is about, then every other aspect of the film should be as seemingly reasonable as it possibly can be. That’s what Jurassic Park tried to do. If I am to believe that an impossibly huge reptilian monster is destroying the city, then the back story of it’s origin ought to sound realistic enough to counter-balance that. That’s what the first Godzilla movie tried to do. After that, filmmakers adopted the opposite strategy; so that everything else in the subsequent sequels had so many outrageous absurdities, each so insanely stupid, that the monster in the middle was the most reasonable element by comparison.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

Stupidity , Idea , Thinking , Science

“Writing is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Life , Way , Study

“Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of Eternity.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 213.

Age , World , Flowers , Time

“Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them”

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

“Poets: Old, New, and Aging”, p. 44
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life , People , Fools , Thinking

“Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, "I am not a crook." Jimmy Carter says, "I have lusted after women in my heart." President Reagan says, "I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope."”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

Time magazine (29 September 1986).

Women , Thinking , Heart

“[ Titchener ] always seemed to me the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated.… He was competent with languages, and could ad lib in Latin when the occasion required it. If you had mushrooms, he would tell you at once how they should be cooked. If you were buying oak for a new floor, he would at once come forward with all the advantages of ash. If you were engaged to be married, he would have his certain and insistent advice about the most unexpected aspects of your problems, and if you were honeymooning, he would write to remind you, as he did me, on what day you ought to be back at work.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: Psychologist at large, 1961, p. 22–23: As cited in: Hergenhahn (2008;274)

Problem , Cooking

“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Pleasure

“Young girls sometimes make use of the expression: “Reading books to read one’s self.” They prefer a book that presents some resemblance to their own circumstances and experiences. It is true that we can never understand except through ourselves. Yet, when we want to understand a book, it should not be our aim to discover ourselves in that book, but to grasp clearly the meaning which its author has sought to convey through the characters presented in it. We reach through the book to the soul that created it. And when we have learned as much as this of the author, we often wish to read more of his works. We suspect that there is some connection running through the different things he has written and by reading his works consecutively we arrive at a better understanding of him and them. Take, for instance, Henrik Ibsen’s tragedy, “Ghosts.” This earnest and profound play was at first almost unanimously denounced as an immoral publication. Ibsen’s next work, “An Enemy of the People,” describes, as is well known the ill-treatment received by a doctor in a little seaside town when he points out the fact that the baths for which the town is noted are contaminated. The town does not want such a report spread; it is not willing to incur the necessary expensive reparation, but elects instead to abuse the doctor, treating him as if he and not the water were the contaminating element. The play was an answer to the reception given to “Ghosts,” and when we perceive this fact we read it in a new light. We ought, then, preferably to read so as to comprehend the connection between and author’s books. We ought to read, too, so as to grasp the connection between an author’s own books and those of other writers who have influenced him, or on whom he himself exerts an influence. Pause a moment over “An Enemy of the People,” and recollect the stress laid in that play upon the majority who as the majority are almost always in the wrong, against the emancipated individual, in the right; recollect the concluding reply about that strength that comes from standing alone. If the reader, struck by the force and singularity of these thoughts, were to trace whether they had previously been enunciated in Scandinavian books, he would find them expressed with quite fundamental energy throughout the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, and he would discern a connection between Norwegian and Danish literature, and observe how an influence from one country was asserting itself in the other. Thus, by careful reading, we reach through a book to the man behind it, to the great intellectual cohesion in which he stands, and to the influence which he in his turn exerts.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: On Reading: An Essay (1906), pp. 40-43

People , Books , Soul , Girl

“I’m sure you’ve run into people who’ve said, “If I just had the time, I could write a book.” Everybody thinks they can write a book. And everybody’s life story could be the subject of a book — I don’t care who they are. It depends how you approach it. But writing itself, either you have it or you don’t have it. -->”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

Life , People , Books , Thinking

“In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 8, "Dangers of Cradle Competition" (also quoted in Charles Valenza, "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.)

Idea , Question

“For three years I studied very assiduously an Arabic dialect spoken by the Bedouins of the Sahara, and I began by writing this language phonetically in Latin characters; the very strange appearance of the grammatical forms which resulted from it caused me to see that our spoken language is as remote from written language as this Saharan dialect can be from literary Arabic, and that our language written phonetically by a foreigner in the same way as I wrote the spoken language in El Golea, presented grammatical forms as strange (and as fascinating) as my Arabic jargon. It is then that the idea came to me to try to draft a small text written phonetically. I had the feeling that by becoming”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Jean Dubuffet, letter to Raymond Queneau, 30 October 1950; as cited in Prospectus Vol. I, Jean Dubuffet; Gallimard, Paris, 1967, pp. 481-483
1950's

Way , Feeling , Idea , Study

“Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.”

J. P. Donleavy (1926–2017) Novelist, playwright, essayist

Interviewed in Punch, March 22, 1978, p. 484.

Money

“There is a shy client who uses invisible ink on Nagiko's body to hide his obvious talent. The woman attempts to develop the invisible ink by bathing in warm water, by standing as close as she dare to a hot fire, by washing her body in the juice of onion-skins until the onions make her weep and her tears prove to be the necessary solvent to reveal the writing.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section J of 26 Facts About Flesh and Ink
The Pillow Book

Tear , Water

“If I tend to reread the European past in my own Postmodern image, if I frequently write about Bach and Beethoven in the same ways in which I discuss the Artist Formerly Known as Prince and John Zorn, it is not to denigrate the canon but rather to show the power of music all throughout its history as a signifying practice. For this is how culture always works—always grounded in codes and social contracts, always open to fusions, extensions, transformations. To me, music never seems so trivial as in its 'purely musical' readings. If there was at one time a rationale for adopting such an intellectual position, that time has long since past. And if the belief in the nineteenth-century notion of aesthetic autonomy continues to be an issue when we study cultural history, it can no longer be privileged as somehow true.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

McClary, Susan (2000), Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, p. 186–169. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520232089

Music , Way , History , Study

“I know what he means: the taste of language that is only spoken and never written because the speaker most likely doesn't read or write. My father has it, too.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

Reading

“I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

As quoted in Wall Street Journal (31 December 1985) on why he did his writing at home very early in the morning while he served as the Librarian of Congress.

Thinking

“The Dutch historian and indologist Andre Wink writes, referring to Prof. Sharma's chief claim to fame, his book on Indian Feudalism in the early medieval period : 'R. S. Sharma's Indian Feudalism has misguided virtually all historians of the period… Sharma's thesis essentially involves an obstinate attempt to find 'elements' which fit a preconceived picture of what should have happened in India because it happened in Europe (or is alleged to have happened in Europe by Sharma and his school of historians whose knowledge of European history is rudimentary and completely outdated)… The methodological underpinnings of Sharma's work are in fact so thin that one wonders why, for so long, Sharma's colleagues have called his work 'pioneering.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Books , School , History , Knowledge

“Why don't we write code that just works? Or absent a "just works" set of patches, why don't we revert to code that has years of testing? This kind of "I broke things, so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak" is not acceptable. […] Don't just make random changes. There really are only two acceptable models of development: "think and analyze" or "years and years of testing on thousands of machines."”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Those two really do work.
Torvalds, Linus, 2011-04-13, Linux 2.6.39-rc3, 2011-04-21 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1126136,
2010s, 2011

Thinking , Change

“I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day…And Nanny let my beetle out
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out
She went and let my beetle out-
And beetle ran away.She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid-
And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME,
And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.”

A.A. Milne book Now We Are Six

Forgiven (affectionately also known as Alexander Beetle).
Now We Are Six (1927)

Housing

“If one is anxious to write about God, one ought to be anxious to write well.”

Charles Williams (1886–1945) British poet, novelist, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings

"The Productions of Time", Time and Tide, Vol. XXII, No. 4 (25 January 1941), pp. 72–73

God

“SHELLEY JACKSON: You began as a writer, moved to performance art, then architecture. I’d like to follow the traces of writing through your career, and see whether your late work could be rethought as a radically materialist practice of writing. What made you want to write?
VITO ACCONCI: I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.”

Vito Acconci (1940–2017) Designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist

Shelley Jackson talks with Vito Acconci http://www.believermag.com/issues/200612/?read=interview_acconci, in: The Believer, Nr. 12. 2006.

World , Art , Home , Imagination

“In writing this book, I hope I have offered some guidance to those—the young especially—trying to articulate their objections to our way of life. However, this is not enough. As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Conclusion: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

Life , Books , World , Hope

“Gloria Estefan is going to be here. She writes these books about her dog, Noelle... and she also dances and sings well, too.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Gretchen Carlson, anchor of Fox and Friends television program (October 12, 2006)
2007, 2008

Books , Dogs , Singing , Dance

“It always bothers me to see people writing 'RIP' when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, 'RIP' is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

Attributed posthumously in social media, but actually a hoax originating from Twitter "Hoax Lou Reed quote fools Twitter (and most of the rest of the internet)", http://en4news.com/2013/10/28/hoax-lou-reed-quote-fools-twitter-and-most-of-the-rest-of-the-internet/ EN4 News, 28 October 2013
Misattributed

People , Feeling , Personality

“I am gratified by her having pleasure in what I write, but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store-closet it would be charming.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1809-01-24) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Pleasure , Idea , Knowledge , Hurt

“A culture is no better than its woods,” Auden writes. Fortunately for him, a book of poetry can be better than its poems. Two-thirds of The Shield of Achilles is non-Euclidean needlepoint, a man sitting on a chaise longue juggling four cups, four saucers, four sugar lumps, and the round-square: this is what great and good poets do when they don’t even bother to write great and good poems, now that they’ve learned that—it’s Auden’s leitmotif, these days—art is essentially frivolous. But a little of the time Auden is essentially serious, and the rest of the time he’s so witty, intelligent, and individual, so angelically skillful, that one reads with despairing enthusiasm, and enjoys Auden’s most complacently self-indulgent idiosyncrasy almost as one enjoys Sherlock Holmes’s writing Victoria Rex on the wall in bullet holes.”

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

Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Books , Art , Angels , Intelligence

“Let’s just grant the possibility that there is a Creator God, who’s omniscient, who occasionally authors books. And he’s gonna give us a book – the most useful book. He’s a loving God, he’s a compassionate God, and he’s gonna give us a guide to life. He’s got a scribe, the scribe’s gonna write it down. What’s gonna be in that book? I mean just think of how good a book would be if it were authored by an omniscient deity. I mean, there is not a single line in the Bible or the Koran that could not have been authored by a first century person. There is not one reference to anything – there are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, and who to kill and why. There’s nothing about electricity, there’s nothing about DNA, there’s nothing about infectious disease, the principles of infectious disease. There’s nothing particularly useful, and there’s a lot of iron age barbarism in there, and superstition. This is not a candidate book.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris in interview by Big Think (04/07/2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zV3vIXZ-1Y&t=4m43s
2000s

Love , Life , God , Books

“I hate the way he writes. I kind of love the way he lives, though.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

On writer Jack Kerouac
Unsourced

Love , Hate , Way

“The line "because you're mine, I walk the line." It kept coming to me, you know? But I was — I was … young and not been married too long. Yes, it kept coming to me. Because you're mine, I walk the line. And then the words just naturally flowed. It was an easy song to write.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

CNN interview (2002)

Nature

“At the point at which the concept of différance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of différance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to différance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions (1982), p. 29

Intelligence

“writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St. Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. I was by no means prepared to go with them even this length; but I was greatly struck with the connected view which they for the first time presented to me, of the natural order of human progress; and especially with their division of all history into organic periods and critical periods.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/163/mode/1up p. 163

Nature , Time , Question , Religion

“no reality is mine, no reality belongs to me (to us), we all live somewhere else, beyond where we are, we are all a reality different from the word I or the word we;
our most intimate reality lies outside ourselves and is not ours, and it is not one but many, plural and transitory, we are this plurality that is continually dissolving, the self is perhaps real, but the self is not I or you or he, the self is neither mine nor yours,
it is a state, a blink of the eye, it is the perception of a sensation that is vanishing, but who or what perceives, who senses?
are the eyes that look at what I write the same eyes that I say are looking at what I write?
we come and go between the word that dies away as it is uttered and the sensation that vanishes in perception—although we do not know who it is that utters the word nor who it is that perceives, although we do know that the self that perceives something that is vanishing also vanishes in this perception: it is only the perception of that self s own extinction,
we come and go: the reality beyond names is not habitable and the reality of names is a perpetual falling to pieces, there is nothing solid in the universe, in the entire dictionary there is not a single word on which to rest our heads, everything is a continual coming and going from things to names to things,
no, I say that I perpetually come and go but I haven’t moved, as the tree has not moved since I began to write,
inexact expressions once again: I began, I write, who is writing what I am reading?, the question is reversible: what am I reading when I write: who is writing what I am reading?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Question , Reality , Sense , Tree

“Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Epilogue (p. 506)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001)

Life

“He said, for example: "Many people working with the Ouija board or automatic writing receive messages that seem, or purport, to come from historic personages. Often, however, the material is vastly inferior to that which could have been produced by the person in question during his or her earthly existence. Any comparison with the material received to the written books or accounts already existing would immediately show glaring discrepancies. Yet in many instances, the Ouija board operator or the automatic writer is to some extent or other tuning in to a world view, struggling to open roads of perception free enough to perceive an altered version of reality, but not equipped enough through training and temperament, perhaps to express it....”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 85

People , Books , World , Question

“I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it. (Rolling Stone magazine 1997)”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Smile , Time

“When I was writing 'The Lords of Discipline,' I went to The Boo for help. 'What makes The Citadel different from all other schools? What makes it different, special and unique? Why do I think it is the best college in the world when I hated it when I was here, Boo? Help me with this.' The Boo held up his hand and said, 'It's the ring, Bubba. Always remember that. The ring, the ring, the ring.' I thought about it for a moment then wrote the words, 'I wear the ring.' 'How about this for a first line?”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

'Perfect, Bubba, just perfect.'
Eulogy for "The Boo" (May 3, 2006)

Hate , World , School , Thinking

“1993 California
Los Angeles Times November 28, 1993
“In what observers called an historic ruling, a Russian court has pronounced the infamous ‘’Protocols of Zion’’ an anti-semitic forgey…[It is] the first such verdict in the land where the fraud originated 90 years ago. ‘Up to now, every country has disengaged itself from this shameful book except Russia where it was concocted,’ Tancred Golenpolsky, the publisher of the Moscow Jewish newspaper that won the ruling, said Saturday. The court cast arose 10 months after Golenpolsky’s Jewish Gazette accused the radical nationalist Group Pamyat (Memory) of printing anti-Semitic sentiments…Fostering ethnic conflict is punishable under Russian law.”
Graphic novelist: I’m writing a graphic book that will reveal the true origin of the infamous “Protocols of Zion.” I hope it will alert those who are ignorant of its falsehood!!
Research desk: Haw! Good luck! You’re dealing with an old vampire that will not die in spite of all the absolute proof of fraudulence.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.113

Books , Law , Hope , Angels

“When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servent girls in the kitchen.”

John Millington Synge The Playboy of the Western World

Preface.
The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

Girl , Learning , Housing

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones:
Misattributed

Marriage , Age , Color , History

“Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell. Go, go,
Go, Johnny go…”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Johnny B. Goode" (1958) · Live performance (1958) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ROwVrF0Ceg
Song lyrics

Way , Boy , Learning , Reading

“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Thinking , Freedom

“Values in a free society are accepted voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by law… every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun, because if you desecrate the flag, you have to punish that person. So how do you do that? You send an agent of the government, perhaps an employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Flags, to arrest him. This is in many ways patriotism with a gun – if your actions do not fit the official definition of a "patriot," we will send somebody to arrest you.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Flag Burning Amendment
2003-06-03
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr060303.htm
2000s, 2001-2005

Alcohol , Law , Way , Behavior

“Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.”

P. D. James (1920–2014) English crime writer

Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography Faber & Faber, London 1999.
Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography

Reality

“We write in the language of Dryden and Addison, of Milton and Shakespeare, but the intellectual world we inhabit is that of Flaubert and Baudelaire; it is to them, and not to their English contemporaries, that we owe our conception of modern life. The artist whose reward is perfection and where perfection can be obtained only by a separation of standards from those of the non-artist is led to adopt one of four rôles: the High Priest (Mallarmé, Joyce, Yeats), the Dandy (Firbank, Beerbohm, Moore), the Incorruptible Observer (Maugham, Maupassant) or the Detached Philosopher (Strachey, Anatole France). What he will not be is a Fighter or Helper.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 4: The Modern Movement (p. 30)

Life , World , Perfection

“If you consider the definition of authenticity, it's saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It's all authentic.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

Complex https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20120128131906/http://www.complex.com/music/2012/01/lana-del-rey-2012-cover-story/page/1 (24 January 2012)

“The initial motive for developing APL was to provide a tool for writing and teaching. Although APL has been exploited mostly in commercial programming, I continue to believe that its most important use remains to be exploited: as a simple, precise, executable notation for the teaching of a wide range of subjects.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

"A Personal View of APL", IBM Systems Journal, 30 (4), 1991

Motivation

“Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Attributed to Ben-Gurion in A Call to Action : The Handbook to Unite and Ignite America's Betrayed and Imperiled Public (2004) by A. T. Theodore, p. 6, but earlier published as a saying of unknown authorship in Uncommon Sense : The World's Fullest Compendium of Wisdom (1987) by Joseph Telushkin, p. 204
Disputed

History , Change

“Bill and I were pretty much the same age bracket, and strangely enough, we both went through the same influences, starting with Nat Cole, going into Bud Powell during the bebop period, and then getting into the Lennie Tristano school orienta—in my particular case, Lee Konitz more than Lennie. I mean, in an era when everybody else was playing funky piano, we… I suppose, in a general category, that made us both the same. Whereby [sic] to my mind, we were both radically different. But after I put out that first album, the reviews started off by saying, "Clare Fischer owes much to Bill Evans." And then, when I would write an album, they would say "Clare Fischer owes much to Gil Evans."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

And I would call that my Evans brothers syndrome.
Radio interview https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/talking-jazz-volume-22-arrangers/id398326105, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT452&dq=%22But+Bill+and+I+were+pretty+much%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWm_Tw9MXRAhWF8CYKHdeKBs8Q6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

Age , School

“I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.”

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

27 June 1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Freedom

“My master's thesis and later my Ph. D. thesis had the aim of axiomatizing a value for e-person games in extensive form. This work made me familiar with the extensive form, in a time when very little work on extensive games was done. This enabled me to see the perfectness problem earlier than others and to write the contributions for which I am now honored by the prize in memory of Alfred Nobel.”

Reinhard Selten (1930–2016) German economist

"Reinhard Selten - Biographical," 1994

Game , Problem , Memory , Time

“The more I write the less substance do I see in my work, … It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as still as death itself — and it will devour me. Its stare has eaten into my soul already deep, deep.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Edward Garnett written in March 1899, published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 2, p. 177

Death , Soul

“I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don't like movies about people who are pulverised for being mavericks.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Virgin.Net interview http://www.virgin.net/movies/interviews/quentin.html

People

“I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Quotes about writing page 31

Quotes about writing
page 31