Essays Quotes - Page 11

• I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

  Maya Angelou

  Brother, Writing, Thinking

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• I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

  Iain Banks

  Book, Years, Drawing

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• I'm not an impersonator. I've only got one voice and only do one guy and his first-person essays.

  Tom Bodett

  Voice, Guy, Firsts

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• For TV you also get those pre-interviews when researchers ask you what you're going to say. The pre-interview drives me insane. If they've already decided the outcome, why don't I just hand in an essay? Maybe if we talk we'll find something out. I'd rather just have an awkward pause.

  Jarvis Cocker

  Hands, Awkward, Insane

  "Jarvis Cocker: the iceman cometh". Interview with Lucy Siegle, www.theguardian.com. June 2, 2012.

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• For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

  Diablo Cody

  Writing, Self, Fiction

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• I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

  Jodie Foster

  Believe, Directing Movies, Situation

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.'

  Tony Judt

  New York, Book, Pieces

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• Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Empathy, Fiction, Stranger

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• I don't write political plays in the sense that I'm writing essays that are kind of disguised as plays. I would really defy anyone to watch any of my plays and say 'Well, here's the point.'

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Play, Political

  "Pulitzer-winning playwright talks gay marriage, Obama, new play". Interview With Chris Welch, www.cnn.com. June 15, 2009.

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• Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Voice, Relaxation

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• It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost—not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things.

  David Wroblewski

  Ink, Stories, Firsts

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• All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

  Rick Riordan

  Teacher, Book, Reading

  Rick Riordan (2013). “Percy Jackson: The Complete Series”, p.19, Penguin UK

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• For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Cheating, Clouds, Sneakers

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.19, Penguin

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• I will not be quoting Hemingway anytime soon, nor will I ever read another one of his books. And if he were still alive, I would write him a letter right now and threaten to strangle him dead with my bare hands just for being so glum. No wonder he put a gun to his head, like it says in the introductory essay.

  Matthew Quick

  Book, Writing, Gun

  "The Silver Linings Playbook: A Novel".

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• What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

  Chinua Achebe

  Children, Book, Prose Poetry

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.44, Penguin

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• The essay I had to read was called, "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in "heroic couplets". If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.

  Maureen Johnson

  Long, Challenges, Criticism

  Maureen Johnson (2011). “The Name of the Star”, p.41, Penguin

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• Aren't you failing English?" I asked. Angeline flushed. "It's not my fault." "Even I know you can't write an article on Wikipedia and then use it as a source in your own essay." Sydney had been torn between horror and hysterics when she told me. "I took 'primary source' to a whole new level!" Honestly, it was a wonder we'd gotten by for so long without Angeline. Life must have been so boring before her.

  Richelle Mead

  Writing, Long, Use

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• I make no apologies for any inconsistencies or contradictions in my essays. Those who do not change their minds in the course of a decade have probably stopped thinking all together.
  The true use of history, whether civil or military, is not to make man clever for the next time, it is to make him wise forever.

  Michael Howard

  Wise, Clever, Military

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• If you tell me, it's an essay. If you show me, it's a story.

  Barbara Greene

  Leadership, Inspiration, Writing

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• I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Fall, Science, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, J. R. De J. Jackson (2000). “Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy”, Bollingen Foundation

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• We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Nature, Science, Understanding

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• ...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

  Maya Angelou

  Motivational, Determination, Believe

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• We should scarcely be excused in concluding this essay without calling the reader's attention to the beneficent and wise laws established by the author of nature to provide for the various exigencies of the sublunary creation, and to make the several parts dependent upon each other, so as to form one well-regulated system or whole.

  John Dalton

  Wise, Rain, Law

  John Dalton (1834). “Meteorological Observations and Essays: Mit Tabellen”, p.137

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• Essay on Adam" There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question.

  Robert Bringhurst

  Simple, Two, Differences

  Robert Bringhurst (2010). “Selected Poems”, p.33, Random House

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• I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes.

  Jen Lancaster

  Jobs, Clever, Writing

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