Famous Quotes & Sayings

Brandon Sanderson

I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them.

Barbara Mertz

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

Brian Aldiss

A writer should say to himself, not, How can I get more money?, but How can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?

Brenda Ueland

the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

Jane Hirshfield

The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me are acts of small or large desperation. They grapple with surfaces too steep to walk in any other way, yet which have to be traveled.

Carl Sandburg

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

Cameron Crowe

Many people don't have an outlet for their feelings or how they can express life and not everybody in a relationship is the kind of person who wants to. But if you can write, you can find a good way to do it.

Alan Lightman

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

Alan Lightman

My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.

Charles Terry

I've played 654 concerts. That's never been done.

Pete Hald

I've never had three players at the same time who can score like they do.

Barbara Stanwyck

My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.

Carice van Houten

I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer, I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me.

C. S. Lewis

But the most obvious fact about praise -- whether of God or anything -- strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. ... The world rings with praise -- lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. ... I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.

Bobby Fischer

All I want to do, ever, is play chess.

Deborah Tannen

When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.

Dikembe Mutombo

The NBA has more than 435 players and there are at least 100-some players doing more than expected. Shaq is doing a lot. Dwight Howard, [Manu] Ginobli. Dirk [Nowitzki] is doing a lot, and not just in Europe; he's reaching out to Africa and all other places.

Dikembe Mutombo

As a matter of fact I've been asked to come when I'm free to play at the White House.

Brandon Sanderson

I love to do what I do. So, I do work long hours.

Brian Andreas

You're not going to see people like this again for a long time, he said and I said I always saw people like this & he looked at me for a moment and said, You're not from around here, are you?

Jane Goodall

Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.

Carson McCullers

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.

Charles Darwin

At no time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.

Jane Welsh Carlyle

the less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do.

Susan B. Anthony

I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go.

Antonio Machado

All uncertainty is fruitfull ... so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand

Brittany Daniel

I've been a vegetarian for so long, I forgot how much I missed meat. You know you don't realize how important meat is to you until you don't have it for long time.