Desks Quotes - Page 24

• I am beginning to respect the apathetic days. Perhaps they're a necessary pause: better to give in to them than to fight them at your desk hopelessly; then you lose both the day and your self-respect. Treat them as physical phenomena -- casually -- and obey them.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Fighting, Self, Giving

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1974). “Locked rooms and open doors”, Not Avail

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• ... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.

  Adrienne Rich

  Growing Up, Real, Flames

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• I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

  Gail Godwin

  Thinking, Shadow, Might

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• A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.

  Marya Mannes

  Men, Doors, Rooms

  Marya Mannes (1964). “But Will it Sell?”

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• Sometimes there's nothing but Sundays for weeks on end. Why can't they move Sunday to the middle of the week so you could put it in the OUT tray on your desk?

  Russell Hoban

  Moving, Sunday, Sometimes

  Russell Hoban (2012). “The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz”, p.168, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.

  Edna Ferber

  Writing, Years, Done

  Edna Ferber (1963). “A Kind of Magic”

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• My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mind, Inability, Nuisance

  Source: www.slate.com

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• We are often miserable at our desk or typewriters, but not happy away from them.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Typewriters, Miserable, Not Happy

  Mary Roberts Rinehart (1939). “Writing is Work”

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• It is not the thinker who is the true king of men, as we sometimes hear it proudly said. We need one who will not only show, but be the Truth; who will not only point, but open and be the Way; who will not only communicate thought, but give, because He is the Life. Not the rabbi's pulpit, nor the teacher's desk, still less the gilded chairs of earthly monarchs, least of all the' tents of conquerors, are the throne of the true king. He rules from the cross.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Teacher, Kings, Men

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 78), 1895.

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• Louis B. Mayer and I got along like a house afire. He never chased me around his desk or tried anything with me. Of course, he never gave me any good parts, either.

  Angela Lansbury

  House, Hollywood, Courses

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• Television, radio, social media. The 24/7 news cycle plows forward mercilessly on our desks, in our cars and in our pockets. Thousands and thousands of messages and voices bombard us from the moment we wake, fighting for our attention. All we see and hear, all day long, is news. And most of it is bad.

  Joseph Prince

  Fighting, Media, Voice

  "Finding grace and peace in a world of bad news" by Joseph Prince, www.foxnews.com. October 29, 2013.

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• I worry very much that people won't like it, or will think it's simply silly. But I have a post-it note above my desk that says "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" And if I weren't afraid, I would do a poetry collection.

  Theodora Goss

  Silly, Thinking, People

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• I'm trolling through the recesses of my mind for the things I did with my kids when they used to like to do things with me. They don't want to be around me now. I look back on these times - all those little funny pottery dishes that you'd pay for, and they'd paint, and they were ugly, and you glazed them, and you'd go back, pick them up, and it's like, "Oh, now I've got to put this on my desk." There's all that kind of stuff.

  Michelle Obama

  Kids, Mind, Looks

  Source: www.popsugar.com

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• I never regard my characters, my protagonists, as personifications. It's not that I sit by my desk and I pick up a character who will be the spokesperson of the Israeli Left, another one will be the spokesperson of the Right, another one will be the spokesperson of Middle Eastern Jews, European Jews, religions Jews and so on.

  Amos Oz

  Character, Middle, Jew

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• In my home office, I built a custom sit-stand desk to which I connected a big, kidney shaped glass top which I got for cheap at Ikea. Kidney-shaped desk tops are, I think, the most efficient of all possible desk shapes.

  William Gurstelle

  Home, Thinking, Glasses

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• I had to perform in Dallas at the W Hotel. I was with my best friend, and I had walked on in to the area where I was meeting the crew. Then my best friend came in, and he's like, "This girl at the front desk asked, 'Is his name Quindon? I know him, he's that guy from Romeo + Juliet, I'm one of his big fans.'" I was just like, how does she recognize me from then to now? I was wowed by that because here I am 34, it was 20 years ago, and how does she recognize me?

  Quindon Tarver

  Girl, Years, Here I Am

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• I've got friends who are so good at getting away with things, like going up to the desk to get upgraded on a plane, for example. I haven't got any of that kind of confidence in those situations. I look so awkward. I act awkward. I'm really apologetic. I fail to get anything that way.

  Ruth Wilson

  Awkward, Way, Example

  Interview with John Cameron Mitchell, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 31, 2016.

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• In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, "Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter." I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, "Maybe they do...maybe stories matter."

  Kate DiCamillo

  Airports, Guy, Matter

  TeachingBooks.net Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. November 12, 2005.

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• I met journalists that were on both sides of things. People who are young, enthusiastic and hard working journalists working on the online side and people who had been there forever. There was one journalist who had running shoes under her desk in case she had to kick of her heels and go out and cover a breaking news story.

  Rachel McAdams

  Running, Hard Work, News Stories

  Source: thefancarpet.com

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• I mean, in 1979 I was seven. I do remember punk, though, as a playground phenomenon, and remember that it was exciting to us. It really was, to a five- or six-year-old, quite a thrilling enticement to revolt. The anarchy sign scratched in desk tops, and so on.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Mean, Years, Six Year Olds

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.

  James Patterson

  Book, Reading, Years

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• I'm really glad that I'm not Anna because I don't want to be there again. I've been there. But when something does happen to me, whether it's that movie or whether it's actually happened to me, I feel that it's my duty to actually share that with all of you guys. I want to immediately go to my desk and start writing about it.

  Stevie Nicks

  Writing, Guy, Doe

  "Stevie Nicks: 'When We Walk Into The Room, We Have To Float In Like Goddesses'". Interview with Ann Powers, www.wbur.org. March 17, 2013.

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• If a couple has their picture taken at a wedding or other social gathering, and the woman looks hot, her guy could be blinking, chewing, or even mid-sneeze, and she’ll still display it on her desk at work.

  Brian P. Cleary

  Couple, Taken, Guy

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• I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.

  Douglas Coupland

  Lying, Believe, Emotional

  Douglas Coupland (2012). “Life After God”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• Oh, terrific," Dan muttered. "Just what we need. Another code! Why can't people just say what they mean? Why can't they say THE MAP IS IN THE DESK?

  Judy Blundell

  Mean, People, Needs

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