Desks Quotes - Page 18

• I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

  Colm Toibin

  Notebook, Writing, Long

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• A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….

  William Faulkner

  Bus Stops, Logical, Train Stations

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• Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.

  Robert Bloch

  Heart, Boys, Jars

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• In the days that follow, he begins to remember things about Moushumi, images that come to him without warning while he is sitting at his desk at work, or during a meeting, or drifting off to sleep, or standing in the mornings under the shower. They are scenes he has carried within him, buried but intact, scenes he has never thought about or had reason to conjure up until now.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Morning, Sleep, Drifting Off

  Jhumpa Lahiri (2003). “The Namesake”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re about to engage in a vigorous rugby match. He’s neatly laid out four types of gum on his Formica desk: Juicy Fruit, Wrigley Spearmint, Big Red, and Eclipse. I hate this guy. I hope to God he’s not a genius.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Hate, Guy, Genius

  A. J. Jacobs (2004). “The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.

  Fernando Pessoa

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, en.wikiquote.org. 1982.

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• I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events—virtually every one I’ve done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches. In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time—being irresponsible... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years.

  Mike Rinder

  Fall, Writing, Years

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• I don't really like to write at a desk. I like to write when driving in a car. ... Once you're working on it, you're working on it all the time, and sometimes stuff'll come in the middle of the night, in a dream or something. Your mind is working on it all the time.

  Paul Simon

  Dream, Writing, Night

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• I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

  Philip Pullman

  Writing, Ideas, Going Away

  Philip Pullman (2017). “Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling”, p.226, David Fickling Books

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• Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can't see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that's not marked by boundaries, it's not a map. We're not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there's a reminder that are a lot worse things, and a lot greater rewards.

  Richard Bach

  Wall, Order, Office

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• You should never pick up a newspaper when you're feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Depressing, Feel Good

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up”, p.21, Ballantine Books

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• I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something - it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere.

  Donald Trump

  Money, Motivation, Ideas

  Donald J. Trump (2007). “Trump 101: The Way to Success”, p.2, John Wiley & Sons

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• Keith Moon, God rest his soul, once drove his car through the glass doors of a hotel, driving all the way up to the reception desk, got out and asked for the key to his room.

  Pete Townshend

  Moon, Glasses, Doors

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• When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Attitude, Writing, Vocabulary

  Donald E. Westlake (2014). “The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany”, p.28, University of Chicago Press

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• When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.)

  Daniel Quinn

  Writing, Editors, Names

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• My very first kiss happened when I was 6, underneath some desks during 'nap time', but my first real kiss happened when I was 15 in the parking lot at a Mexican food restaurant.

  Armie Hammer

  Real, Kissing, Naps

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

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• Just write. It doesn't matter what you write. Just sit at your desk and write.

  Emma Thompson

  Writing, Matter

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• And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

  Herman Melville

  Real, College, Men

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.108

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• Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as the governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life.

  Mitt Romney

  Years, Pieces, Sides

  "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, www.nbcnews.com.

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• It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.

  Edward Abbey

  Feet, Long, Support

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.13, RosettaBooks

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• Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life.

  Tayeb Salih

  Life, Education, Garden

  Tayeb Salih (1991). “Season of Migration to the North”, p.119, Heinemann

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• My classroom is set up to accommodate the different types of assignments students do. Sitting at a single desk the entire class time just doesnt work for this type of class.

  Christine Taylor

  Class, Different, Sitting

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• I went to university for a couple of years and I didn't enjoy university. The studying and the accountancy, economics, I just hated that stuff. Now the irony is here I am lawyer, accountant, I do it all day every day and sit at a desk. So I've never ended up where I wanted to be in many ways. I always wanted to be a farmer.

  Gerry Harvey

  Couple, Years, Here I Am

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• So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write

  George Lopez

  Beach, Writing, Grandmother

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