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!

Alain Badiou

Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.

Bob Dole

There they are. See no evil, hear no evil, and...evil.

Ben Jonson

They that know no evil will suspect none.

Dorothea Dix

Every evil has its good, and every ill an antidote.

Donna Summer

I need you by me, beside me, to guide me, to hold me, to scold me, cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad.

Damian Marley

Fear not of evil.. Everyday dem flesh it grow old Changes of the time take the toll.

E. B. White

Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.

Douglas Horton

Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain.

Adolf Hitler

The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.