Blank Quotes

• The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank.

  George A. Sheehan

  Running, Differences, Jogging

  32 Copy quote

• Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.

  William Zinsser

  Fall, Writing, Sky

  4 Copy quote

• A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Writing, Giving

  "The Poetics of Reverie". Book by Gaston Bachelard, 1960.

  30 Copy quote

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• Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life.

  Douglas Pagels

  New Year, New Day, Pages

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  46 Copy quote

• Blank pages inspire me with terror.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Inspire, Pages

  Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

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• I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

  Jenny Agutter

  Patience, Doubt, Paper

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  63 Copy quote

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• Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

  A. R. Ammons

  Vision, Definitions, Way

  A. R. Ammons (1996). “Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

  Anthony Doerr

  Teaching, Reading, Writing

  "Off the Page: Anthony Doerr". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. October 14, 2004.

  52 Copy quote

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

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Pieces

  29 Copy quote

• I am aware that my name has been connected with all the bank robberies in the country; but positively I had nothing to do with any one of them. I look upon my life since the war as a blank, and will never say anything to make it appear otherwise.

  Cole Younger

  Life, Country, War

  7 Copy quote

• Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying that you understand your responsibility, you have a political conscience and you came to vote, but you don't agree with any of the existing parties and this is the only way you have of saying so.

  Jose Saramago

  Beach, Party, Mean

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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• I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

  Anna Quindlen

  Life, Beach, Ocean

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.11, Ballantine Books

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• And I told her point blank, you've got everything to live for. You've got such talent. You're back singing great, lose the weight. And she went and did it, and look at her now!

  David Gest

  Sight, Singing, Looks

  "Love on the rocks". "Dateline NBC" with Stone Phillips, www.nbcnews.com. February 6, 2014.

  7 Copy quote

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• The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

  Steven Pinker

  Zero, Simple, Mind

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 8, 2002.

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• In the studio, I do try to have a thought in my head, so that it's not like a blank stare.

  Cindy Crawford

  Trying, Staring, Studios

  84 Copy quote

• I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

  Juan Cole

  Pigs, Use, Administration

  24 Copy quote

• No, I don't autograph blank slips, checks, or stickers, and certainly no books without me in them.

  Jack L. Chalker

  Book, Checks, Sticker

  7 Copy quote

• What's the classical moment that every actor or actress deals with? A tragic thing. They get that blank, faraway look in their eyes. But in life, it's not that way.

  Skeet Ulrich

  Eye, Looks, Actors

  7 Copy quote

• When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Mean, Writing, Literature

  34 Copy quote

• I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster, and I start that way, the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it.

  Lesley Gore

  Song, Morning, Writing

  11 Copy quote

• I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want.

  Tobey Maguire

  Want, Slate, I Can

  9 Copy quote

• I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

  Robert Quine

  Fighting, Thinking, Guitar

  96 Copy quote