Essays Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• 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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• Purple light passed over the paper, but nothing happened. "Next!" Amy said. She was sure the man in black was going to burst in on them any second. "Whoa!" Dan said. Amy gripped his arm. "You found it?" "No, but look! This whole essay - 'To the Royal Academy.' He wrote a whole essay on farts!" Dan grinned with delight. "He's proposing a scientific study on different fart smells. You're right, Amy. This guy was a genius!

  Rick Riordan

  Men, Purple, Smell

  Rick Riordan (2016). “The 39 Clues 1: The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones”, p.86, Scholastic UK

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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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• 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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• Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Philosophy, Book, Eye

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• I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes.

  Camille Paglia

  Order, Class, Waiting

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• Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, “Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless — discuss.

  J. K. Rowling

  Writing, Eagles, Burning

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, p.9, Pottermore

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• I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time

  Thucydides

  Winning, Moments, Applause

  History of the Peloponnesian War bk. 1, ch. 1

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• Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Interesting, Sometimes, Reviews

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.

  Emilia Clarke

  Drama, Writing, School

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• If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

  Ray Bradbury

  Faith, Morning, Teaching

  "The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing". 2010.

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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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• Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. He meant physics, of course. There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology.

  Israel Gelfand

  Effectiveness, Physics, Biology

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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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• We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. 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. For one breath everything feels better. Then it melts. The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Cheating, Girlfriend, Lying

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• Her essay about the wedding ring was short. Kerr wrote: "Things are just things - they have no power to hurt or to heal. Only people can do that. And we can all choose whether to be hurt or healed by the people who love us." That was all. And that was everything.

  Jack Canfield

  Hurt, People, Wedding Ring

  Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen (2012). “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II: More Stories of Life, Love and Learning”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

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• In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Two, Choices, Humanity

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• That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.

  Steven Millhauser

  Dream, Art, Book

  FaceBook post by Steven Millhauser from Aug 19, 2015

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• There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

  A. S. Byatt

  Book, Glasses, Ideas

  A S Byatt (2009). “The Children's Book”, p.119, Random House

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• There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.

  Alberto Manguel

  Lines, Fables, Justified

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.30, Vintage Canada

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• Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

  Anne Lamott

  Prayer, Grief, Believe

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.37, Penguin

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• The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays

  Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Life, Lying, Men

  FaceBook post by Barbara Taylor Bradford from Sep 20, 2013

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• I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Poet, Pardon

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.108, Booklassic

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