Blank Quotes - Page 6

• I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.

  Sylvia Plath

  Years, Overcoming, Done

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.307, Anchor

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• Like every girl, I only need to look up and a little to the right of me to see the hysteria that belongs to me, the one that hangs om a hook like an empty jacket and flutters with disappointment that I cannot wear her all the time. I call her my hysteric, and this personal hysteric of mine is designer made (though I'm not sure who made her), flattering and comfortable, attractive even, if you're around people who like that sort of thing. She is not anyone, my hysteric; she is blank, electricity dancing around a filament, singing to kill.

  Helen Oyeyemi

  Girl, Disappointment, Hysteria

  Helen Oyeyemi (2013). “The Opposite House”, p.29, A&C Black

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• The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, White, Space

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.57, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

  Georges Perec

  Space, Sea, Land

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• Without music, life would be a blank to me.

  Jane Austen

  Music, Would Be, Music Life

  Jane Austen (1882). “Emma”, p.236

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• Most people are blind to magic. They move thru a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing and they’re dead before they die.

  Lev Grossman

  Moving, People, Bored

  Lev Grossman (2009). “The Magicians: A Novel”, p.88, Penguin

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• I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Disappointment, Self, Mind

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Seriously, Shane? Ditto? That's the best you can do?" Shane and Michael exchanged identical looks and shrugs. Guys. "Let me show you idiots how it's done," Eve said, and hugged Claire fiercely. She kissed her on the cheek. "I love you, CB. Please take care of yourself, okay?" "I love you, too," Claire said, and suddenly her throat felt tight and her eyes burned with tears. "I really do." Shane and Michael watched them with identical expressions of blank bemusement, and finally Shane said, "So basically, it's what I said. Ditto.

  Rachel Caine

  Love You, Eye, Expression

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• What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.

  John Marsden

  Hands, Paper, Lines

  John Marsden (1997). “The Dead of Night”, p.92, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

  Suzanne Collins

  Children, Father, Home

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.10, Scholastic Inc.

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• I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Want

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• Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Morning, Rain, Heart

  'In Memoriam A. H. H.' (1850) canto 7

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• My room is cleared. My head is cleared. Earlier, around dawn, I took out the last load of trash. I look around and see what's left. Nothing. There is no more Daelyn Rice. As I was. As I am. Or will become. I'm a blank slate

  Julie Anne Peters

  Dawn, Looks, Lasts

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• He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Broken, Feelings, Giants

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.70, Macmillan

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• The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, People, Demand

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.155, Modern Library

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• It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Clouds, Pieces

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

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• He looked blank. “He’s the one who’s been doing the magic against us?” “Duh,” I said. “Doona be ‘duh’ing me, lass,” he growled, his burr thickening.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Magic, Duh, Said

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.573, Dell

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• When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.

  Peter Høeg

  Talking, Long, Mind

  Peter Høeg (2013). “Borderliners: A Novel”, p.35, Macmillan

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• What is it with McDonald's staff who pretend they don't understand you unless you insert the 'Mc' before the item you're ordering? It has to be a McChicken burger...a chicken burger gets blank looks. Well, I'll have a McStraw and jam it into your McEyes, you f**cking McTosser!

  Billy Connolly

  Mcdonalds, Looks, Burgers

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• I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don't have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn't be harming anything.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Space, Fruitcake, Stuff

  "The Washington Post", November 13, 1983.

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• I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended.

  Luis Alberto Urrea

  Mistake, Writing, Character

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• Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to versemaking, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject.

  Charles Darwin

  Teaching, Mean, School

  Charles Darwin (2016). “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.25, VM eBooks

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• When I do research, I have done - 90 percent of my time is the research, the other ten percent is the writing. So I don't have to face a blank piece of paper. I can look at this as a quote that I have from somewhere.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Writing, Faces, Looks

  Source: www.achievement.org

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• The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.

  Edna Ferber

  Wall, Writing, Views

  Edna Ferber (2014). “A Kind of Magic: An Autobiography”, p.78, Vintage

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• The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

  Francois Fenelon

  War, Book, Past

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