“When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.” WayYearsLongStoriesWantedMotherDesireBlackWhiteChangedPagesHundredDecidedEightScreensPoundsShort StoryBlack And WhiteNever ChangeGoatsParagraphLaptops Author:Tea Obreht
“This is a perfect example of the power and ridiculousness of a website like Wikipedia. I did give a slightly contentious graduation speech, where I decided not to be funny as my classmates had hoped, which was why I was chosen. I was not valedictorian, that's for sure. Instead, I talked about the failure to communicate between the administration and the teachers and students. That's what was contentious about it. At some point, somebody wrote about that incident on my Wikipedia page. And then somebody added the bit about me exposing my genitals to the crowd.” GivingBitsPerfectTeacherExampleStudentsSpeechPagesDecidedCrowdsCommunicateChosenAdministrationIncidentsWebsiteExposingWikipediaTeacher And StudentClassmatesContentiousGraduation SpeechValedictorians Author:Nick Kroll
“It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.” ImportantFactsAmericaInterestingOpinionPagesDecidedOppositesMethodPrintCleaningEditorialsIgnoring Facts Author:Herbert Bayard Swope
“There is, for instance, only one page at the beginning of Runciman's three-volume History of the Crusades describing how the participants decided to begin four hundred years of wars, and then several thousand pages devoted to the routes, battles and other events which make up the "history" of the Crusades.” YearsWarThreeFourEventsBattleThousandPagesHundredDecidedInstanceDevotedVolumeRoutesDescribingParticipantsCrusades Book:The New Psychohistory Source: The New Psychohistory
“I can't relate to the idea of suicide. I guess I'm just one of those people that is always optimistic and upbeat. But one day, I sat down. I said 'You know what? Just to kind of purge myself, I want to see what its like to feel that low'. So I decided to write a suicide note. Yeah, just to kinda flush it out there and put it on a page. And I started to do this, and I had an epiphany. I'll share this with you: a suicide note that is written by somebody that is not suicidal is called an autobiography. I am on Chapter 58.” PeopleKnowsWantFeelsWritingKindSaidI CanIdeasWrittenShareOne DayPagesLowsDecidedYeahSuicideNotesOptimisticRelateSatJust OneChaptersAutobiographySuicidalEpiphanyUpbeatSuicide Note Author:Dane Cook
“When we got married, we knew our honeymoon was going to be public, anyway, so we decided to use it to make a statement. We sat in bed and talked to reporters for seven days. It was hilarious. In effect, we were doing a commercial for peace on the front page of the papers instead of a commercial for war.” WarUseEffectsFrontsBedPaperMarriedPagesDecidedSevenStatementsSatReportersPapersHoneymoonSeven Days Book:The Playboy interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono Source: The Playboy interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono
“In researching literary agents I did what the books tell you to do: I looked at the acknowledgments page of a book that was similar to mine. Happily, that author thanked his agent. I looked up the agent on the web and found out that he not only represented authors writing books similar to mine, but I knew some of his clients! So, I sent in the manuscript, and they decided to represent it.” WritingBookFoundMinesPagesDecidedAgentsClientsWriting A BookManuscriptsAcknowledgmentLiterary Agents Author:Debra Hamel
“This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. . . . Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. . . . Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.” GivingHeartCountryThreeInterestingStudyHappenedPagesHundredDecidedSuicideMiseryRateCommitNovelistsHopelessGrayOptimistEighty Author:P. G. Wodehouse
“Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.” ThinkingWritingBookDoneCharacterSeemsReadingImaginationKindnessNovelReaderMetsCreaturesPagesDecided Book:The Uncommon Reader Source: The Uncommon Reader