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.

Arthur Miller

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

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.

Ben Fountain

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

Ben Folds

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you thats the center of it, that is it. Its almost like theres something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if youre a songwriter that sings your material.

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.

Jessica Valenti

As a kid, I wasn't sure that I would ever get married - I was not the kind of little girl who played at being a bride.

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.

Billie Holiday

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

Bill Hybels

Personally, I've never understood inactivity. Why a person would sit when he could soar, be a spectator when he could play, or atrophy when he could develop...is beyond me!

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.

Charles Spurgeon

We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously He once waited for us.

Bonnie Raitt

Leading a band and producing yourself and picking cool tunes and putting a show together takes a lot of thought, and a certain amount of courage. In my early twenties, if I wasn't getting good enough at it, then people would not come and see me. Anybody who has lasted this long - I hope we get better with age.