Columns Quotes - Page 12

• Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

  Art Buchwald

  Writing, Suffering, Failing

  Art Buchwald (1994). “Leaving home: a memoir”, Thorndike Pr

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hollywood is right. A good and strong movie can have a more powerful social impact than any and all political speeches or newspaper editorials and columns.

  Mike Royko

  Strong, Powerful, Impact

  13 Copy quote

• Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.

  Frank Moore Colby

  Men, Civilization, Drawing

  Frank Moore Colby (1926). “The pursuit of humor and other essays”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.

  William Safire

  Nuggets, Looks, News

  "How to Read a Column" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. January 24, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days.

  Edward Hoagland

  Loneliness, Avid, These Days

  Edward Hoagland (1983). “The tugman's passage”, Viking Pr

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Dust, Two, Drawing

  52 Copy quote

• I have no interest in non-fiction. I don't read it and don't watch it and don't write it, other than a little journalistic column.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Writing, Watches, Fiction

  4 Copy quote

• Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Writing, Space, Gas

  6 Copy quote

• The dinner party is a suburban form of entertainment. Its spread in our big cities represents an insidious Fifth Column suburbanization of the metropolis.

  Phillip Lopate

  Party, Cities, Dinner

  Phillip Lopate (2004). “Getting Personal: Selected Writings”, p.148, Basic Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, I refer to Celebrity Jeopardy as the short-bus Jeopardy, because it is a lot easier. Like, there was a whole column basically naming stores in New York.

  Andy Richter

  New York, Easier, Stores

  Interview with Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. May 16, 2001.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I still have the desire to succeed, and I've always felt success is measured by what you've done in the win column, not top 10s.

  Hale Irwin

  Winning, Desire, Done

  "Hale Irwin, 66, has 45 years of S.F. history". Interview with Ron Kroichick, www.sfgate.com. October 26, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The night before, go over your schedule and see what you're going to do and what the purpose of what you're doing is. I advocate having a two-column schedule. On the left, put down all your appointments and phone calls. On the right, put down what the purpose is.

  Robert Pozen

  Night, Phones, Two

  4 Copy quote

• You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?

  Larry Wall

  Doe, Lines, Want

  Usenet article, 1990.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.

  William Safire

  Looks, Littles, Ratios

  4 Copy quote

• And we may be led, then, upward through more
  Powerful forms of poetry, past columns
  With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.
  Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms
  Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.

  John Ashbery

  Country, Art, Powerful

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• All over France, in every city there stand cathedrals like this one, triumphant monuments of the past. They tower over the homes of our people like mighty guardians, keeping alive the invincible faith of the Christian. Every arch, every column, every statue is a carved leaf out of our history, a book in stone, glorifying the spirit of France.

  Sonya Levien

  Christian, Book, Home

  9 Copy quote

• I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Reality, Media, People

  6 Copy quote

• I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.

  James Surowiecki

  Writing, Hard Times, Thinking

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.

  Don Marquis

  Morning, Night, Ideas

  9 Copy quote

• We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!

  Daniel Webster

  Country, Gratitude, Morning

  Daniel Webster (1843). “An Address Delivered at the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1843”, p.59

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I also enjoy writing my regular column for Organic Gardening magazine, so I may do more of that sort of thing in the future, if anybody wants it!

  Ken Thompson

  Writing, Gardening, May

  4 Copy quote

• It's nice to know that if you've worked really hard at something, it gets recognised with a tick in the success column - however you define that, be it making a bunch of dough, which the actors never see much of, or whether it's a piece that's enlightening or stays with the audience maybe six, seven or even eight or 10 years later.

  Brendan Fraser

  Nice, Eight, Years

  "Inkheart - Brendan Fraser interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this.

  Dan Savage

  Past, Guy, Advice

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I once recommended [in a San Francisco Chronicle column] that a third arm - a plastic arm - be sewn at the base of the spine so that people could have a tripod to sit on while waiting in line, and it was taken seriously.

  Alan Abel

  Taken, San Francisco, Waiting In Line

  Source: www.esquire.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.

  Caitlin Moran

  Fun, Writing, School

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source