Desks Quotes - Page 11

• ...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.

  Anne Lamott

  Cat, Interesting, Crafts

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.3, Anchor

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Typewriters, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk.

  Hortense Calisher

  Coffee, Men, Speak

  7 Copy quote

• I can remember playing under the big wooden desk in his office. My mother didn't like us to chew gum, so we'd go into his office, and he'd feed us gum under the desk.

  John F. Kennedy Jr.

  Mother, Father, Office

  54 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you haven't noticed yet, working sucks. Unless you are a racecar driver or an astronaut or Beyonce, working is completely and utterly devoid of awesome. It is hard, it lasts all day, the lighting is generally fluorescent, and, apparently, drinking at your desk is frowned upon. If you ever needed to ruin someone's fun, I mean really poop a party, just move things to the workplace. Fun terminated.

  Aisha Tyler

  Fun, Party, Drinking

  7 Copy quote

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

  Emma Thompson

  Writing, Matter

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.

  Whitley Strieber

  Christmas, Writing, Years

  11 Copy quote

• I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the ship's Guest Relations Desk whether snorkeling necessitates getting wet...I now know the precise mixocological difference between a Slippery Nipple and a fuzzy navel.

  David Foster Wallace

  Differences, Ships, Nipples

  10 Copy quote

• While you, the leader, can teach many things, character is not taught easily to adults who arrive at your desk lacking it. Be cautious about taking on reclamation projects regardless of the talent they may possess. Have the courage to make character count among the qualities you seek in others.

  John Wooden

  Moving, Character, Leader

  11 Copy quote

• Persist - don't take no for an answer. If you're happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you'll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.

  David Rubenstein

  Money, Years, Risk

  52 Copy quote

• Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.

  George Singleton

  Writing, Flames, Ifs

  George Singleton (2008). “Pep Talks, Warnings, And Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom And Cautionary Advice For Writers”, p.59, Writer's Digest Books

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate... and marvels will be performed.

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Food, Men, Air

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (2009). “The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy”, p.121, Vintage

  32 Copy quote

  Show source