Pages Quotes - Page 12

• In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to leave the world of ideas behind. Here we were, two people lying in bed, Eunice's worried head propped on my collarbone, and I wanted us to feel something in common. I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn't that how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?

  Gary Shteyngart

  Love, Lying, Reading

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.339, Random House

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• Words like passion and ecstasy, we learn them but they stay flat on the page. Sometimes we try to turn them over, find out what's on the other side, and everyone has a story to tell os a woman or a brothel or an opium night or a war. We fear it. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, War, Passion

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• Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Women, Winning, Boys

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1870). “Catherine. Titmarsch among pictures and books. Fraser miscellanies. Christmas books. Ballads”, p.565

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• I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first attempt I have ever made & yet I perceive I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. ... The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.

  Mark Twain

  Believe, Writing, Typewriters

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• The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that.

  Ben Nicholson

  Uncles, Grandmother, Organization

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• I think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.

  Bruce Babbitt

  Country, Thinking, People

  Interview with Gwen Ifill, www.pbs.org. January 5, 2001.

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• Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Country, Wisdom, Mistake

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.773, Library of Alexandria

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• Blues, rock and hip hop are more about a lifestyle and culture than notes on a page.

  Jake Shimabukuro

  Rocks, Hip Hop, Culture

  "Jake Shimabukuro On His Ukulele Heroes, ‘Rolling In The Deep,’ And His Dream Song To Cover". Interview with Hallie Sekoff, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 29, 2012.

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• Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.

  Erica Jong

  Thinking, Shopping, America

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• I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it.

  Paul Rudnick

  Character, Writing, Night

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• I write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent . . . somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre.

  Ellen McLaughlin

  Writing, Order, Land

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• Actually, who hasn't been through the ghastly experience of sitting in front of a blank page, with its toothless mouth grinning at you: Go ahead, let's see you lay a finger on me? A blank page is actually a whitewashed wall with no door and no window. Beginning to tell a story is like making a pass at a total stranger in a restaurant.

  Amos Oz

  Wall, Doors, Mouths

  Amos Oz (1999). “The Story Begins: Essays on Literature”, Harcourt

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• Talk isn't work. Work is when you have pages in the evening that you didn't have in the morning.

  Frederic Raphael

  Morning, Crafts, Evening

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• I took many notes, more than usual before I sat down and wrote Act One, Scene One. I had perhaps eighty pages of notes. . . . I was so prepared that the script seemed inevitable. It was almost all there. I could almost collate it from my notes. The story line, the rather tenuous plot we have, seemed to work out itself. It was a very helpful way to write, and it wasn't so scary. I wasn't starting with a completely blank page.

  Charles Busch

  Writing, Work Out, Scary

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• I haven't had a single moment of terror since they told me [I was dying]. My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.

  Dennis Potter

  Regret, Single Mom, Dying

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• To many Congressmen and Senators right now, there's a ceaseless antagonism toward Hollywood because politically, it is high-reward and low-risk. So when you can't do anything about poverty or the budget deficit, and you can't deal with Bosnia or the possibility of nuclear explosions in Russia, what do you do? You bash Hollywood and get on the front pages.

  Jack Valenti

  Russia, Risk, Bosnia

  "Public Endorses Uplifting Movies, Dole Tells Hollywood" by Adam Nagourney, www.nytimes.com. July 31, 1996.

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• For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.

  Washington Irving

  History, Honor, Add

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• The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

  Augustus William Hare

  Character, Blood, History

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”

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• It's clear that when we're this outnumbered by the creatures, we have to take a page from the British Empire and rule the lesser species through intimidation. That's why the single most important thing you can do as a human is to dominate an animal. Need more proof?Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. I'd say that about covers it.

  Stephen Colbert

  Moving, Animal, Sea

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• Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Girl, Fall, Believe

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.94, Vintage

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• I would say seeing the original Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the old Fillmore was a pretty powerful influence on me.

  Ronnie Montrose

  Powerful, Bird, Influence

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• She once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear.

  Katie Roiphe

  Bird, Atmosphere, Stories

  Katie Roiphe (2007). “Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939”, p.70, Dial Press

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• The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Technique, Way

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• Until Sammy Baugh - pro football in Texas was a one-paragraph story on the third page of the Monday sports section.

  Dan Jenkins

  Leadership, Sports, Football

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• Senator John McCain, who spent over five years in a Vietnamese POW camp, publicly releases 1,000 pages of medical records. Now people are left with only open nagging questions: what kind of freak has 1,000 pages of medical records?

  Jon Stewart

  Years, People, Records

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