Best activity & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Working on 'Raising Hope' is a very hurry-up-and-wait activity, and I just always liked the idea of being as productive as I can be. I write because I don't just want that time to dissolve, where I'm sitting in a trailer staring blankly at the paintings of moccasins that came with the trailer.”

Want Writing I Can Ideas Waiting Painting Activity Sitting Staring Productive Trailers Hurry Up And Wait

Author:Lucas Neff

“The different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices.”

Writing Different Term Practice Teaching Activity Aspect Criticism Separation Visuals

Author:Barbara Kruger

“If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.”

Ifs Thinking World Writing Kind Stills Activity Disappear

Author:Karl Ove Knausgard

“The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing.”

Should Writing Language Social Space Practice Subjects Position Judging Masters Theory Activity Safe Research Discourse Analysts

Author:Roland Barthes

“When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years whether it is being the writer or being the lover turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.”

World Writing Years Humans Ideas Jobs Turns Written Lovers Activity Excitement Fifty Human Activity Unwritten Exuberance

Author:Philip Roth

“Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.”

Thinking Writing Ready Activity

Author:Gail Godwin

“Writers were never meant to be professionals. Writing is not a profession, it is an activity, an essentially amateur occupation. It is what you do when you are not living.”

Writing Activity Profession Occupation Meant To Be

Author:Fay Weldon

“In brief, we who write are all in the same boat, as if we are survivors of torpedoes, and we hope to reach the shores of thought with strength for more activity.”

Ifs Writing Activity Boat Survivor Shore Torpedoes

Book:A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters

Source: A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters

“Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.”

Thinking Writing Littles Doe Would Be Young Wish Hours Wise Identity Calling Healthy Activity Oneself Satisfied Pornography Being Wise Verbs Nouns

Author:Lorrie Moore

“Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.”

Writing Novel Activity

Book:13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Source: 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

“Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when Im alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.”

Thinking Writing I Can Book Term Activity Pens Angle Stature

Author:Ashwin Sanghi

“There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do.”

Want Writing Book Differences Huge Activity Conversation Stranger Intimate Writing A Book

Author:Michelle Tea

“In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.”

People Knows Want Writing Play Company Roles Groups Ready Activity Theater

Author:Marsha Norman

“I try when I'm writing to fill my head and my ears with all sorts of stuff and then let it settle and filter through. At a certain point it seems like fruitless activity because you're taking a lot of time and not seeming to get anything. And then, slowly, you realize you've actually digested elements and that your thinking is being freed up and the way you build up compositions is changed as a result of what you've been listening to.”

Thinking Way Writing Trying Seems Certain Stuff Realizing Results Changed Listening Activity Elements Ears Settling Composition Seeming Filters Being Free

Author:Peter Gabriel

“Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.”

Writing Jobs Reading Half Conditions Activity Novelists Resumes Half Days

Author:Robert Musil

“Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.”

Source: A Nation Without a Conscience

“One of the more popular activities was “Talk-O-Matic”. Five people at a time could write messages, and read each other's messages, on the same screen. Today, Internet chat rooms work on the same principle. One of the remarkable new features of this page was that you could log in with an invented name, and pretend you were anyone you wanted - any name, any age, any gender. One favorite trick was to log in using the name of someone else already logged into the page, simply to confuse everyone else.”

People Writing Age Today Wanted Names Rooms Principles Five Internet Activity Messages Pages Gender Screens Tricks Features Remarkable

Author:Guy Consolmagno

“It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".”

Thinking Writing Mean Hard Spirit Values Simple Common Activity Limits Definitions Exploration Display Exploring Cleverness Hacks Hacking Playfulness

Author:Richard Stallman

“I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.”

Thinking Giving Writing Firsts Stories Remember Activity Authority Give Me Dollars Selling Fifty Short Story

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly.”

Ifs Writing Trying Humans Book Problem Wisdom Earth Fun Social Human Beings Poor Love You Activity Increase Reform Without Love No Love

Book:Talks by Krishnsmurti in India, 1965: Madras, Bombay, New Delhi [and] Varanasi: authentic report

Source: Talks by Krishnsmurti in India, 1965: Madras, Bombay, New Delhi [and] Varanasi: authentic report

“Art and writing come from somewhere down around the lizard brain. It's a much more peculiar activity than we like to think it is. The problems arise when we try to domesticate the practice, to pretend that it's a normal human activity and that "everybody's creative." They're not.”

Thinking Writing Trying Humans Art Problem Brain Practice Creative Activity Normal Arise Peculiar Human Activity Lizards

Author:Dave Hickey

“Writing is a solitary activity, it requires isolation and silence.”

Writing Silence Activity Isolation Solitary

Author:Dacia Maraini

“I care about the records I make and I love writing songs and some songs are really dear to me and they mean something. But the memory of making the records and the activities surrounding the records, the people involved in them is actually a bigger thing to me.”

People Writing Mean Care Song Memories Records Involved Activity Bigger Dear I Care Writing Songs

Author:Joel Plaskett

“Writing a book is as different from digital curation as night and day. Digital curation is a series of split-second decisions: good/no good. It can even be done algorithmically. Writing is process-intensive activity.”

Writing Book Different Done Night Process Decision Activity Series Digital Splits Writing A Book

Author:Guy Kawasaki

“Why write if this too easy activity of pushing a pen across paper is not given a certain bullfighting risk and we do not approach dangerous, agile and two-horned topics?”

Ifs Writing Two Certain Given Easy Risk Dangerous Activity Paper Approach Pushing Pens Topics Bullfighting

Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset

“Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change.”

Men Writing Has Beens Made Past Activity Essentials Late Training Too Late My Past

Book:Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays

Source: Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays

“As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.”

Writing Littles Stills Bits Novel Written Activity Little Bit Esoteric Great Writing Technicians Great Novels

Author:Jonathan Lethem

“Just as writing can become calligraphy when it's creatively, skillfully, and consciously performed, so can all other activities become art. In this case, we are reflecting upon life itself as an artistic statement-the art of living.”

Writing Art Cases Activity Statements Artistic Reflecting Art Of Living Calligraphy Reflecting Upon

Author:H. E Davey

“If you think that what you're doing is not all that important in the larger scheme of things and that you're just an insignificant creature in the whole wide world, which is full of six billion people, and that people are born and die every day and it makes no difference to future generations what you write, and that writing and reading are increasingly irrelevant activities, you'd probably never get out of bed.”

“Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing."”

Writing I Can Ideas Social Activity Excuse Obsessed Justify Manuscripts Extracurricular Activities

Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Writing itself is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery. In writing, for the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains always ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.”

“...compartmentalization of occupations and interests bring about a separation of that mode of activity commonly called 'practice' from insight; of imagination from executive 'doing.' Each of these activities is then assigned its own place in which it must abide. Those who write the anatomy of experience then suppose that these divisions inhere in the very constitution of human nature.”

Writing Humans Interest Imagination Practice Human Nature Activity Constitution Insight Separation Executives Division Occupation Anatomy

Author:John Dewey

“I grew up wearing black arm-bands when the hunger strikers died. I went on those marches. I grew up basically a Provo, though I never obviously got into any activities. I was writing 'IRA, Brits out' on walls all over where I grew up, but that was a false sense of Irishness.”

Writing Black Wall Arms Grew Activity Band Grew Up Died Hunger March Brits Ira Strikers Wearing Black

Author:Glen Hansard

“We delude ourselves if we believe that skilled behavior is easy, that it can come about without effort. We forget the years of tuning, of learning and practice it takes to be skilled at even the most fundamental of human activities: eating, walking, talking, reading, and writing. It is tempting to want instant gratification - immediate expert performance and experiential pleasure - but the truth is that this primarily occurs only after considerable amounts of accretion and tuning.”

“A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.”

People Writing Doors Activity Office Creating Assuming Code Software Solitary

Author:Bill Gates

“To design things means to interfere with things: to think of how they might be and to alter how they are. Design is to making as writing is to speech: it is an ordinary physical activity pushed to a conscious edge. That interference with the given world can still be founded on admiration. Where it is not, what is the point of designing at all?”

Thinking World Writing Mean Stills Might Given Design Activity Speech Ordinary Conscious Edges Admiration Interfere Interference Physical Activity

Author:Robert Bringhurst

“Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.”

Knows Writing Can Do Novel Know How Activity Damage Desks Unnatural

Book:The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

Source: The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing

“Time can't be managed. I merely manage activities. Each night, I write down on a sheet of paper a list of the things I have to accomplish the next day. And when I wake up ... I do them.”

Writing Night Next Activity Paper Wake Up Accomplish Lists Manage Sheets Next Day

Author:Earl Nightingale

“Not explicitly, no. Compared to this enormous, relentless evolutionary activity in the built environment, writing is small potatoes.”

Writing Environment Activity Built Enormous Potatoes Relentless Built Environment

Author:Teju Cole

“Saying "yes" [to sexual activity] is a pretty low baseline for sexual experience and I wanted to write about what was happening to girls after "yes."”

Writing Wanted Girl Activity Lows Happenings Saying Yes

Author:Peggy Orenstein

“What I do is work for three or four years and then I take a year off, and then I come back again and work for three or four years and then take another year off. It is not about just working and then writing for a year. That is not how it is structured. It is about doing very conscious goal-driven activities for four years and then taking a year off in complete surrender to discover facets of myself that I don't know exist and exploring interests with no commercial value associated with them at all.”

Knows Writing Years Values Three Goal Interest Four Activity Conscious Driven Surrender Four Years Exploring Back Again Facets Another Year

Author:Karan Bajaj

“The whole idea is that the combination of tight activity and slack activity allows me to be both productive and creative at the same time. In the four years that I am actually working in a proper job, I am earning money and I'm also writing with a lot of discipline on the side.”

Writing Years Ideas Whole Jobs Sides Creative Four Discipline Activity Combination Productive Four Years Earning Earning Money

Author:Karan Bajaj

“To maintain a youthful mind, write down two or three things you can do that are totally childlike, such as eating an ice cream cone, coloring a picture, or jumping rope. Find something that brings back the sense of fun you had as a child and choose one of these activities to do today.”

Writing Mind Children Two Today Three Fun Can Do Activity Eating Ice Cream Ice Cream Jumping Rope Three Things Childlike Cones Ice Cream Cones

Author:Deepak Chopra

“Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.”

Thinking Should Writing Firsts Wells Reason Play Activity First Time Tennis Athletic

Author:Natalie Goldberg

“I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.”

Writing Activity Claims Sentences

Author:David Byrne

“As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.”

Writing Art Stills Together Practice Activity Creatures Architecture Publishing Living Creatures

Author:Ai Weiwei

“What Malcolm X did not know is that back in 1962, a collaborator of Alex Haley, fellow named - a journalist named Alfred Balk had approached the F.B.I. regarding an article that he and Haley were writing together for The Saturday Evening Post, and the F.B.I. had an interest in castigating the Nation of Islam, and isolating it from the mainstream of Negro civil rights activity.”

“Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.”

People Thinking Knows World Writing Has Beens Facts Lasts Modern Havens Involved Activity Machines Curious Copies Old Fashioned Domain Typewriters Duplicate Processors

Author:Susan Sontag

“We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.”

People Ifs Should Writing Humans Age Young Speak Taken Rights Communication Activity Letters University Human Rights Editors Senators Organize Congressman Letters To The Editor

Author:Elie Wiesel

“Drawing is more fun to me than writing. I think it's interesting to talk to different cartoonists about how those activities work for them. I'm a very writerly cartoonist. I certainly spend more time on the writing than I do on the drawing, even though the drawing, of course, is very time-consuming.”

Thinking Writing Different Courses Fun Interesting Activity Drawing More Time Consuming Cartoonist Time Consuming

Author:Alison Bechdel

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