Desks Quotes - Page 13

• But the Fear (that sensation that all writers get of how the hell do words get from my puny little brain to into a book, and isn't magic somehow involved, and surely I'm not qualified to be involved in any part of that process, and I somehow managed that tomorrow, but you mean I have to do it this morning too, well how do I even start?) withdraws quite a bit when it's already light and lovely outside when I get to my desk. So I got right past that big moment today, and into the fun slide down towards the ending, yelling whee.

  Paul Cornell

  Morning, Fun, Book

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• Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

  Anne Enright

  Weekend, Years, May

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• Wait a minute, words in the prompter, script on my desk, vending machine upstairs out of Funyuns... the writers are back!

  Jon Stewart

  Waiting, Machines, Scripts

  "Listening In as Writers Return to Late-Night Shows". "All Things Considered" with Melissa Block, www.npr.org. February 14, 2008.

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• Palestinians no longer blamed Yasser Arafat or Hamas for their troubles. Now they blamed the Israelis for killing their children. But I still couldn't escape a fundamental question: Why were those children out there in the first place? Where were the parents? Why didn't their mothers and fathers keep them inside? Those children should have been sitting at their desks in school, not running in the streets throwing stones at armed soldiers.

  Mosab Hassan Yousef

  Mother, Running, Children

  Mosab Hassan Yousef (2011). “Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices”, p.158, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• I compose with bells a lot. Bells and breath. Both things you react to without thinking about it. Bells traditionally give us orders: come to the desk, the truck is backing up, the ice cream is here, it's time to go to church. They're sounds our brains are already associated with.

  Sxip Shirey

  Thinking, Ice Cream, Order

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• Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.

  Paul Kane

  Lonely, Writing, Computer

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• I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The 'mot juste' unarriving? Tell that to your desk.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Writing, Years, Middle East

  "A Home in Fiction". Boyer Lectures 2011: "The Idea of Home", Lecture 4, www.abc.net.au. December 11, 2011.

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• If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing.

  Dan Brown

  Glasses, Blood, Ideas

  "Dan Brown: Veni vidi da Vinci". www.theguardian.com. December 12, 2004.

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• I'm even though I'm not per se sitting at a desk and in school, I'm still learning all the time.

  Hayden Panettiere

  School, Sitting, Well Rounded

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• I'd rather do manual labor than sit behind a desk. And as my grandparents got older, I'd fly out there and help out around the farm. We'd tear barns down; we'd build barns. I'd rather be outside rolling hay or driving the tractors.

  Kellan Lutz

  Grandparent, Tears, Rolling

  Interview with Mark Jacobs, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 19, 2010.

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• I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Book, Boys, Hands

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• So many times each day we support each other informally without ever becoming 'helper' or 'helped.' Perhaps we're finding an article of clothing for a partner, cutting bread for one of the children, collecting the mail for the person at the next desk, holding the coat for someone at a restaurant.

  This is quotes copyright © By Pumpkin Limited

  Ram Dass

  Children, Cutting, Support

  Ram Dass, Paul Gorman (2011). “How Can I Help?”, p.119, Knopf

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• The credibility of the work depends on copy editors. I would argue with the copy desk, but I would thank them more.

  Bill Kovach

  Editors, Arguing, Credibility

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• We need a president who will lead with a stronger, more consistent foreign policy. We also need our commander in chief to put more faith in military leadership who have all of the combat experience. It’s bad policy to try to micromanage too much operationally and tactically from a desk in the Oval Office.

  Lee Zeldin

  Military, Office, Trying

  "Congress at War". www.politico.com. July, 2015.

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• I'm always doing comedy and will never hit up a 9-to-5 desk job.

  Brandon T. Jackson

  Jobs, Comedy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Every morning or afternoon, whenever you want to write, you have to go up and shoot that old bear under your desk between the eyes.

  Robert Leckie

  Morning, Writing, Eye

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• I hear people say they're going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements. Indefinite plans get dubious results. When we're concrete about our writing time, it alleviates that thin constant feeling of anxiety that writers have - we're barbecuing hot dogs, riding a bike, sailing out in the bay, shopping for shoes, even helping a sick friend, but somewhere nervously at the periphery of our perception we know we belong somewhere else - at our desk!

  Natalie Goldberg

  Dog, Writing, Somewhere Else

  Natalie Goldberg (2011). “Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft”, p.78, Open Road Media

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• Because my parents were American missionaries who sent me to public schools in rural Japan, I had to confront Hiroshima as a child. I was in the fourth grade - the only American in my class - when our teacher wrote the words "America" and "Atomic Bomb" in white chalk on the blackboard. All forty Japanese children turned around to stare at me. My country had done something unforgivable and I had to take responsibility for it, all by myself. I desperately wanted to dig a hole under my desk, to escape my classmates' mute disbelief and never have to face them again.

  Linda Hoaglund

  Country, Teacher, Children

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The person who sits at his or her desk the longest is not necessarily the best. In fact, he or she might also be the least efficient. It's also often the case that people with family responsibilities are particularly productive at work.

  Kristina Schroder

  Responsibility, People, Might

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• Military metaphors are rarely exact, but sending Republicans against Democrats when the issue hangs in the balance is nearly always as futile as sending George B. McClellan against Robert E. Lee, the Italians against Marshal Montgomery's desert rats or an Arab armored division against an Israeli rifle company. The copy desk can write the headline before the battle begins and take the rest of the night off.

  Wesley Pruden

  Military, Writing, Night

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• Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.

  Mary Rose O'Reilley

  Religious, Jobs, Heart

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• I don't have a Bloomberg on my desk. I don't care.

  Seth Klarman

  Care, I Don't Care, Don't Care

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• When the decision is up before you-and on my desk I have a motto which says "The buck stops here"-the decision has to be made.

  Harry S. Truman

  Decision, Bucks, Motto

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• Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.

  Denis Johnson

  Husband, Doctors, Doors

  "'What a Pair of Lungs!': Denis Johnson’s Ecstatic American Voice" by Philip Gourevitch, www.newyorker.com. May 27, 2017.

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• He shook me, and despite it being one-handed, it made my teeth rattle. “If anything like that ever happens again. You. Leave. Me. Behind. Do you understand?” I would have argued, but I was feeling a little shocky for some reason. “I’m not good at abandoning people,” I finally said. A front-desk person scurried over, first-aid kit in hand, but Pritkin snarled at the poor guy and he quickly backed up a step. “Then get good at it!” He stomped off, limping, one shoulder hanging at an odd angle. “You’re welcome,” I murmured.

  Karen Chance

  Hands, People, Guy

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