Desks Quotes - Page 12

• Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hunting, Land, Shopping

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.216, Library of America

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• If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Two, Trying

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.52, A&C Black

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• I have a few things that I have written over the years that haven't been made, but I sort of feel like there was a good reason why they were not made. So I am not anxious to go back and fix them. I don't have something in the desk drawer that I think, "The time is right now. If I just do this, it'll be great." It is kind of out of sight and out of mind. I am thinking ahead rather than back.

  Steven Zaillian

  Thinking, Sight, Years

  Source: collider.com

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• Responsibility always stops at the president's desk.

  John McCain

  Responsibility, President

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Sometimes to write you need to do more than just appear at your desk-you need to take care of the part of you that dreams and imagines and creates. Reading can usually do this for writers, but sometimes you also need to watch films, listen to music, go to an art museum, or see a play. Or just sit outside and soak up the sky.

  Barbara Abercrombie

  Dream, Art, Reading

  Barbara Abercrombie (2012). “A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement”, p.185, New World Library

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• Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor.

  David Sedaris

  Running, Jobs, Fun

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• I like to customize things. I customized the back of old Lincoln to be my mobile office. I had one of those little laptop desks like in a police car, and I had a cooler in there, so that was my mobile office.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Car, Office, Police

  Source: pursuitist.com

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• I'd much rather be on stage talking to a couple of retards for
  twenty bucks than sitting at my desk thinking up jokes for...well let's say
  a few dollars more.

  Larry David

  Couple, Thinking, Talking

  "Larry David: The Man Behind Seinfeld". The Laugh Factory Magazine Interview, www.laughfactory.com. June 28, 2016.

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• I don't write at the library, because I smoke when I work or would like the possibility of a smoke. Also, I need to be at my own desk.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Library, Needs

  Source: www.timeout.com

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• I met the girl who works at the Doubletree front desk, she gave me her number. It's ZERO. I tried to call from here, some other woman answered. "You sound older!"

  Mitch Hedberg

  Funny, Girl, Zero

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• But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.

  Andre Dubus

  Book, Writing, Hatred

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• It's hard to visualize the toys you had fifty years ago - all save bear. He's as clear as if he were sitting on the desk in front of you...of course...he probably is.

  Pam Brown

  Years, Sitting, Fifty

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• Susan Wojcicki at Google makes a point to leave the office at 6 P.M. After 9 P.M. she gets back online to handle any pressing work issues that need her attention. She told us she hopes that sends a message to all parents that it's OK to spend time away from the office. All the women we spoke to on the show use technology in a similar way. They are very clear that they don't need to be chained to a desk. They can take time out of their work day to be with their families.

  Willow Bay

  Technology, Issues, Office

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Moving, Writing, Snapshots

  "Sandra Cisneros looks back as a writer in search of home". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2015.

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• Here are the bills again, I always dread them a little. They are familiar presences: first in the mail box, then in the bill drawer, now on the desk. Services Rendered. "My life is dependent on services rendered."

  Gunilla Brodde Norris

  Littles, Bills, Mail

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• I'm not a nervous person. I'm not afraid to be on TV. I'm only afraid when I write. When I'm at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Writing, People, Tvs

  FaceBook post by Fran Lebowitz from Jan 16, 2012

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• I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.

  Shirley Jackson

  Morning, Coffee, Believe

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• The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle.

  Fred Allen

  Average, Growth, President

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• With novels, you're sitting at a desk, alone, going slightly crazy, for anywhere from six months to a year with zero feedback.

  Duane Swierczynski

  Zero, Crazy, Years

  "Crime novelist Duane Swierczynski on shedding the Spanx for noir in the new BLACK HOOD #1". Interview with Donna Dickens, uproxx.com. January 28, 2015.

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• Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

  Norman Mailer

  Writing, Simple, Years

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• Outdoors for me is walking from the car to the ticket desk at the airport

  Frank Zappa

  Airports, Car, Tickets

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• Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Prayer, Writing, Thinking

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.70, Beacon Press

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• My favorite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

  Anthony Horowitz

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

  Wendell Pierce

  Book, Writing, Editors

  Source: collider.com

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• If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.

  Muriel Spark

  Writing, Cat, Serenity

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