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Columns Quotes

“Mr. Fulbright hasn't said anything new or interesting or clever in five years; his intellectual well dried up the day after Walter Lippmann stopped writing his regular column.”

Writing Years Wells Said Interesting Five Intellectual Clever Five Years American Politics Columns

Book:The real Spiro Agnew: commonsense quotations of a household word

Source: The real Spiro Agnew: commonsense quotations of a household word

“I must not mix champage, whiskey, and gin. (Repeated fifty times to fill column.)”

Media Fifty Columns Whiskey Gin

Author:Westbrook Pegler

“What a fantastic honour to be given the opportunity to write a column in the first ever 'Sunday Sun.'”

Writing Firsts Opportunity Given Sun Fantastic Sunday Honour Columns

Author:John Sentamu

“The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.”

Wells May War Country Left Middle Ready Red Zone Coast Fifth Columns

Author:Andrew Sullivan

“The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down.”

Enough Hell Letters Newspapers Editors Nuts Columns Letters To The Editor

Book:Confessions of a Crap Artist

Source: Confessions of a Crap Artist

“When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.”

Hands Given Opinion Paid Newspapers Fence Scratches Columns Chins

Author:Carl Hiaasen

“Im pretty adept with computers and Photoshop for my blog, and I found my style with a conversational voice and an image-ready column.”

Found Voice Style Ready Computer Blogs Columns Adept Photoshop

Author:Robert Mankoff

“If you look at Gothic detailing right down to the bottom of a column or the capital of a column, it's a small version of the whole building; that's why, like dating the backbones of a dinosaur, a good historian can look at a detail of a Gothic building and tell you exactly what the rest of the building was, and infer the whole from the parts.”

Ifs Looks Whole Building Dating Bottom Details Versions Historian Gothic Columns Dinosaurs Backbone

Author:Charles Jencks

“Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.”

“There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.”

People Writing Wells Book Might Earth Beautiful Order Black Rich Borders Exquisite Columns

Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

“Down the blue night the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow”

Night Break Flow Blue Presses Clouds Wave Columns Unending Tumult

Book:Collected Poems

Source: Collected Poems

“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand--a center of gravity.”

Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

“Being accused of making money by selling sex in Hollywood, home of the casting couch and the gratuitous nude scene, is so rich with irony that it's a better subject for a comic novel than a column.... On one coast the cops are busting sex workers on Eighth Avenue, dragging them downtown to night court where they pay the fine and go right back to their corner; on another they're charging Heidi Fleiss with pandering in a town in which the verb is an art form.”

“A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.”

Feels Should Looks Littles Able Reader Columns Ratios

Author:William Safire

“And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.”

People Ifs May Littles Art Real Country Past Form Poetry Powerful Poet Indifference Columns Posters Peeling

Book:Selected poems

Source: Selected poems

“All over France, in every city there stand cathedrals like this one, triumphant monuments of the past. They tower over the homes of our people like mighty guardians, keeping alive the invincible faith of the Christian. Every arch, every column, every statue is a carved leaf out of our history, a book in stone, glorifying the spirit of France.”

People Book Home Christian Past Spirit Cities Alive Stones France Towers Leafs Guardian Statues Monument Columns Invincible Cathedrals Triumphant Arches

Author:Sonya Levien

“The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakspere [sic], and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul.”

Littles Soul Reading Actors Literature Lost Acting News Dust Columns Theatrical Lost Souls Ibsen

Author:Minnie Maddern Fiske

“My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.”

Mother Father Growing Up Growing Paper Locals Engineers Columns Electrical Pittsburgh

Author:Jason Kilar

“I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.”

“I sometimes mistake my typewriter for my teeth, because the more I bite the more my column will be read.”

Sometimes Mistake Teeth Bites Columns Typewriters

Author:Sheilah Graham Westbrook

“The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the begining. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.”

Source: Peace on Earth

“We do have, I'm sad to say, a fifth column that is living within our own countries that is utterly opposed to our values, we're going to have to be a lot braver... in standing up for our Judaeo-Christian culture.”

Country Christian Values Culture Standing Fifth Columns I'm Sad

Author:Nigel Farage

“If you're trying to get a bit of attention, you can smash up your hotel room or spend all your time going to openings or doing the gossip column thing. I just decided to do gigs in French, German, Spanish, and in America.”

Ifs Trying America Bits Rooms Attention Decided Opening Hotel Gossip Gigs Columns Hotel Rooms

Author:Eddie Izzard

“Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side.”

“Every year I write a tax advice column and I used to always make fun of that. One year, one of my favorite IRS commissioners, I think his name was Roscoe somebody, wrote that one of the most often-asked questions by taxpayers was, "How can I contribute more?" Well, I tell ya, ol' Roscoe's really been doing situps under parked cars again. I've heard a lot of people ask a lot of questions about taxes, but I never heard anybody say, "How can I, the ordinary person, send more money for no reason?"”

“When I write my annual tax column, some ex-IRS agent will complain, "There you go IRS bashing again." They're always saying that they're just doing their job. Someone I know once said, "You could get another job."”

Knows Writing Said Jobs Taxes Complaining Agents Exes Columns Annuals Irs

Author:Dave Barry

“I was very pleased to get a Supreme Court justice suggesting a column, so I went and did a column about Beano. I went with my wife and another guy to a Mexican restaurant, which we thought would be the ultimate test for an antiflatulance product. There's a reason most of Mexico is located out of doors. And it worked. Several newspapers refused to run that column. But they did run advertisements for Beano.”

“I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.”

Thinking Writing Book Done Guy Habit Newspapers Columns New Books

Author:Dave Barry

“You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.”

Littles Long Moving Used Rooms Novel Gone Shapes Long Time Towns Hotel Staying Comforting Columns

Author:Anna Quindlen

“We should call editorials what they are: columns written by committees.”

Should Written Committees Columns Editorials

Author:Dave Barry

“You're not allowed to park a truck in your driveway. You're not allowed to work on your house on Sunday. The people who enforce these laws are nuts. After I wrote a column on this, I got I don't know how many letters from Coral Gables homeowners, story after story after story, wonderfully horrible stories. And the venom they felt for their own government!”

People Knows Stories Government Law House Felt Know How Letters Horrible Parks Sunday Nuts Truck Columns Venom Driveway Homeowners

Author:Dave Barry

“The Life Cube Burn is cathartic, fun, exciting, and even reverent. It's a spectacular opportunity to put a sense of finality to the event. And when those thousands of written "wish-sticks" inserted into the Cube from all kinds of people combine with the art and shared messaging from the write boards in a blaze of flame and a column of smoke and ashes, it becomes a communal and very spiritual moment.”

People Writing Kind Art Moments Spiritual Opportunity Fun Wish Written Events Exciting Sticks All Kinds Smoke Flames Boards Ashes Spectacular Columns Cubes Finality Cathartic

Author:Scott Cohen

“Be grateful. Find something to be grateful for. Don't do too many things that make you feel like you deserve to lose because we do program our own computers. I believe there is a plus and a minus column and if you end up on the minus column, your own conscience will make you lose.”

Ifs Feels Believe Ends I Believe Loses Like You Computer Conscience Deserve Program Grateful Plus Be Grateful Columns Minus

Author:Jim Carrey

“I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.”

Thinking Writing Long Hard Done Facts Pieces Dues Hard Times Columns

Author:James Surowiecki

“I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.”

Ideas Night Three Morning Novel Get Up Volume Columns Paragraph Nightfall

Author:Don Marquis

“We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!”

Source: An Address Delivered at the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1843

“I also enjoy writing my regular column for Organic Gardening magazine, so I may do more of that sort of thing in the future, if anybody wants it!”

Ifs Want Writing May Enjoy Magazines Gardening Columns

Author:Ken Thompson

“It's nice to know that if you've worked really hard at something, it gets recognised with a tick in the success column - however you define that, be it making a bunch of dough, which the actors never see much of, or whether it's a piece that's enlightening or stays with the audience maybe six, seven or even eight or 10 years later.”

Ifs Knows Years Hard Actors Audience Pieces Nice Six Seven Eight Bunch Enlightening Columns Tick Dough

Author:Brendan Fraser

“I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this.”

Ifs Way Feels Has Beens Past Guy Advice Jokes Edges Sanity Compassionate Leafs Columns Over The Edge

Author:Dan Savage

“I once recommended [in a San Francisco Chronicle column] that a third arm - a plastic arm - be sewn at the base of the spine so that people could have a tripod to sit on while waiting in line, and it was taken seriously.”

People Waiting Lines Taken Arms Thirds Plastic San Francisco Columns Spine Chronicles Waiting In Line Tripods

Author:Alan Abel

“I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.”

Giving Writing Mean I Can Kids School Fun Hours Sitting Smoking Chairs Cigarette Lungs Columns Typing

Author:Caitlin Moran

“I can't stand to see red in my profit-or-loss column. I'm Taurus the bull, so I react to red. If I see it, I sell my stocks quickly.”

Ifs I Can Loss Red Sells Profit Bulls Columns Taurus

Author:Barbra Streisand

“I continue coupling a plate of silver with one of zinc, and always in the same order... and place between each of these couples a moistened disk. I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.”

Ifs Giving Form Order Couple Capable Twenties Fingers Shock Silver Metals Plates Columns Disk Coupling Zinc

Author:Alessandro Volta

“When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, "and I don't want to read that in your magazine!" In which case I wouldn't use it. But if they didn't remember to say it, I'd nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject.”

Ifs Want Writing Said Stories Use Remember Political Waiting Interesting Cases Subjects Materials Add Magazines Gossip Collecting Columns Something Interesting

Author:Simon Hoggart

“To me, the fun part of both jobs is to always try to push the discussion and debate forward in some way. The most fun part of being a theater critic for the Times was always to try and champion something that maybe other people didn't like, or that was produced under obscure circumstances or had to fight for its life. And I would say in the column what I try to do is in some ways related in that I'm trying to fight for a point of view. I'm not trying to be a kingmaker in either job, and don't want to be, and shouldn't be.”

People Way Want Trying Jobs Fighting Fun Views Circumstances Theater Critics Point Of View Debate Discussion Champion Related Obscure Columns

Author:Frank Rich

“In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights.”

“The sadness from reading letters that you know you can't help because it's a person who's in extremis and their problems are not soluble by an advice column.”

Knows Persons Helping Problem Reading Sadness Advice Letters Columns

Author:Emily Yoffe

“The White House and the media need one another in order to be successful in their jobs. The White House depends on the media to make its case to the public; the media need the White House to fill their airtime and news columns.”

Needs Jobs Order House White Cases Successful Media Depends News Being Successful White House Columns

Book:What Liberal Media?: The Truth about Bias and the News

Source: What Liberal Media?: The Truth about Bias and the News

“People ask why I do monochromatic clothes; the reason is because I'm thinking in proportion to the world. In this room, your head is going to look so much more interesting if it's on a monochromatic column. Whereas I think people think of outfits and gets a little too fussy, a little too detailed. I'm always thinking of the line of a person standing with their head in a room and I always feel like a stalk, or a stem, or a pillar is nicer. I always think of everything architecturally.”

People Ifs Thinking World Feels Looks Littles Persons Reason Asks Lines Interesting Rooms Clothes Standing Proportion Stem Columns Pillars Stalking Outfits Always Thinking Fussy Monochromatic

Author:Rick Owens

“Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.”

Source: Bluebeard: A Novel