The Written Quotes

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

All the old history was written for the amusement of the ruling classes. The lower classes couldn't read, and their rulers didn't care about remembering what happened to them.

The highest teaching is never written down. It's only communicated from teacher to student because it's a "transmission of the lamp." It's a transmission of mind.

You are treading the path to your greatness: no one shall follow you here! Your passage has effaced the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to the three least-appreciated and hardest-working proselytizers of the written word: independent bookstores, librarians, and teachers.

Your legacy is being written by yourself. Make the right decisions.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.

A Writer says: read what I have written An historian says: listen to my lecture A critic says: listen to what I think A journalist says: let me tell you a story.

I should have written more. I should have written more during the period when I just liked so much doing the political work in the streets.

There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.

Shantaram is the second in the series of a quartet of novels that I have planned about my life but is the first to be written. The third book is a sequel to Shantaram, the first a prequel.

This book was written in those long hours I spent waiting for my wife to get dressed to go out. And if she had never gotten dressed at all this book would never have been written.

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.

A writer is someone who has written something today

All through my career I've written 1,000 words a day - even if I've got a hangover. You've got to discipline yourself if you're professional. There's no other way.

I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

Textbooks are written in an oracular monotone, so that they claim to be true and important.

If people don't like your work, all the still pictures in the world can't help you and nothing written about you, even oceans of it, will make you popular.

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

Only when a book is written out of passion is there much hope of its being read with passion.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Everything you need to know about a customer has been written by them or about them. And it lives on the Internet. All you have to do is uncover it. And use it.

Mary is a very well-written typical eldest child in that she puts her own needs at the forefront... She's not as inclined to conciliate or placate. Cora is fascinated by Mary

The combination of what's written and just being in the moment is always the best way. You gotta start out with something solid and then you play.

In celebration of Mother's Day yesterday, President Obama called three moms who had written him letters. Then kids who made their mom a macaroni necklace said, 'Thanks, Obama.'

Restaurant Man is kind of the story, an unabridged story of what happened in my life, the good bad and ugly. Some people might glean some life lessons. It is honest, not written as a press release.

Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.

True worth is as inevitably discovered by the facial expression, as its opposite is sure to be clearly represented there. The human face is nature's tablet, the truth is certainly written thereon.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.

I want to be positive and say: everything I've written will get made eventually.

Some films do portray women in their 40s well, and some other films don't. Some films are written by women, so maybe there's a little more accuracy there.

When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.

Miracles and magic pervade the things that I've written, but yet there are no miracles and there is no magic.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.

Talented people are written off once they hit their 50s and 60s, and the saddest thing is, we just get better as we get older.

I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false.

“Money to Burn” is a fantasy. I mean, I would love for that to be a true story. Most of my songs are written in metaphors.

A lot has been written about the merits and problems with detox but it is definitely worth it overall.

A masterfully written text for the M&A student and professional: clear, concise, comprehensive, practical, and insightful.

Few things are better in the world than a room full of librarians. I consider them literary heroes. The keepers and defenders of the written word.

Strange, I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes.

I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.

My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.