Blank Paper Quotes

• Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peculiar, Paper, Notable

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

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• I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Writing, Humor

  FaceBook post by Steve Martin from Feb 29, 2012

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• My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.

  Dirk Benedict

  Paper, Rooms, Favorites Things

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• Blank paper has always inspired me.

  Daniel Handler

  Paper, Inspired, Blank

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• Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

  William Wordsworth

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Ernest De Selincourt, Alan G. Hill, Chester Linn Shaver (1967). “The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Volume VIII. A Supplement of New Letters”, p.51, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Blank Mind, Feelings

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.379, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

  Sidney Sheldon

  Writing, Pieces, Paper

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• Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

  John Updike

  Morning, Character, Fog

  John Updike (2012). “Collected Poems, 1953-1993”, p.186, Knopf

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• Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?

  Mark Vonnegut

  Crazy, Ideas, Paper

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• My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Writing, Perfect Days, Heaven

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• Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

  Gene Fowler

  Inspirational, Writing, Blood

  Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. "Successful Scientific Writing", p. 53, 2000.

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• Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Pieces

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• So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it.

  Harold Acton

  Regret, Real, Writing

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• You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Important, Paper

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.837, Simon and Schuster

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• Writing is very difficult. You have 120 pages of blank paper and it's like, "Go fill that up with some funny stuff," and that's challenging.

  Bobby Farrelly

  Writing, Challenges, Paper

  Source: collider.com

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• The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao's sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about human nature.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Beautiful, Character, Men

  "State of Humbug". Interview with Bernand Chapin, spectator.org. January 25, 2008.

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• My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

  Virginia Woolf

  Children, House, Anxiety

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4304, Delphi Classics

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• All I have to do is keep my spirit, feelings and conscience like a sheet of blank paper, and let the Spirit and power of God write upon it what He pleases. When He writes, I will read; but if I read before He writes, I am very likely to be wrong

  Brigham Young

  Writing, Feelings, Paper

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• Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Girl, Hurt, Loving You

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• Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

  Neil Gaiman

  Jobs, Writing, Winning

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• Writing in a journal is just a stall, a waiting game, a way to tell yourself that you're working when you're not, that you're doing something of value when you're just using up paper, that you're a writer when in fact you're just going through the motions of one. Look at me! I have blank paper in front of me-and now I'm filling it, with words!

  Robert Masello

  Writing, Games, Waiting

  Robert Masello (2005). “Robert's Rules of Writing”, p.12, Writer's Digest Books

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• The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work-especially his first full-length book-and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.

  Paul Johnson

  Book, Writing, Perfect

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• That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper.

  Jimmy Breslin

  Writing, Enemy, Paper

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