Paragraph Quotes - Page 9

• I'm just very, very slow. I would not make it as a journalist, I've got to tell you. I sweat bullets over every sentence, and sometimes, you know, a day will pass and I've written one paragraph, and I've been at the computer for four hours.

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Sweat, Four, Bullets

  Source: content.time.com

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• The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of flour and water... I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky... but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Thinking, Tchaikovsky, Water

  "Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?". The Atlantic Monthly, April 1955.

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• With a book you can read the same paragraph four times. You can go back to page 21 when you're on page 300. You can't do that with film. It just charges ahead.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Four, Pages

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• If we have dwelled on Godel's work at some length, is it because we see it in the mathematical analogy of what we would call the the ultimate paradox of man's existence. Man is ultimately subject and object of his quest. While the question whether the mind can be considered to be anything like a formalized system, as defined in the preceding paragraph, is probably unanswerable, his quest for an understanding of the meaning of his existence is an attempt at formalization.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Men, Understanding, Mind

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• Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

  Kevin J. Anderson

  Years, Use, Literature

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• Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"

  Fran Lebowitz

  Writing, Thinking, Opposites

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2011.

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• Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Passion, Reality

  Aldous Huxley (2017). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals”, p.153, Routledge

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• Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Book, Two, Size

  Robert A. Heinlein (1959). “The Door Into Summer”, Roc

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• No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.

  Anthony Lane

  Writing, Firsts, Fifty

  "No Pain, No Gain" by Anthony Lane, www.newyorker.com. February 23 & March 2, 2015.

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• My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Eight, Pages

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 6, 2010.

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• The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn't is that you push through the parts where you know that you've just written seven pages when all you're looking for is one paragraph.

  Anne Lamott

  Differences, Pages, Seven

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 6, 2010.

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• I try to get a feeling of what's going on in the story before I put it down on paper, but actually most of this breaking-in period is one long, fantastic daydream, in which I think about anything but the work at hand. I can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph—each sentence, even—as I go along.

  William Styron

  Writing, Thinking, Hands

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• The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

  Harold Bloom

  Beautiful, Prose, Written

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• The man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration; he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Illustration, Becoming

  "Collected Fictions" by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, 1998.

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• My movies were not reaping the kind of emotional rewards that I wanted. I wanted them to be appreciated and they weren't. I didn't want the reviews to say, "Mel Brooks has made another movie," and you get the title somewhere in the second paragraph.

  Mel Brooks

  Emotional, Titles, Want

  "Mel Brooks Remembers the Funniest Movie He Ever Made". Interview with Jason Guerrasio, www.esquire.com. May 21, 2014.

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• Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.

  Anna Garlin Spencer

  Uncles, Writing, Achievement

  Anna Garlin Spencer (1908). “Woman's Share in Social Culture”

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• Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.

  Robert Benchley

  Half, Letters, Today

  Robert Benchley (1943). “Benchley beside himself”

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• Trying to take a feeling from one language, and express it in another is naturally that's my goal. You can't possibly achieve that in a perfect way because there's so many things you have to take into consideration. You know, think about every word, every sentence, every paragraph, and do what you can.

  Ann Goldstein

  Thinking, Perfect, Goal

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• I used to write poems more when I was younger, but I haven't in a long time. I just write ideas and paragraphs and go from there.

  Kacey Musgraves

  Writing, Ideas, Long

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• Writing is the act of creation. Put words on page. Words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to 7-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don't give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn't control him. Push aside lofty notions and embrace the workmanlike aesthetic. Hammers above magic wands; nails above eye-of-newt. The magic will return when you're done. The magic is what you did, not what you're doing.

  Chuck Wendig

  Book, Eye, Writing

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• I like to think of the individual words, then you put the word in the sentence, then you have to think about what that word means in the sentence, then you have to read the sentence in the paragraph - you're sort of building up like that; that's my philosophy.

  Ann Goldstein

  Philosophy, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Stories, Pages

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Research is all well and good, but I definitely enjoy writing the most. I will happily sit at my computer and work on a single paragraph for hours. And there's no better feeling than when your writing is going well.

  Debra Hamel

  Writing, Feelings, Research

  Source: keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com

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• [Glenn] Thrush's emails to [Hillary] Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were splashed across screens in newspapers nationwide. Thrush was criticized for sharing a half dozen paragraphs of a draft of a story for Podesta to rebut. Some reporters do just that. Other newsrooms have policies discouraging or forbidding it. Thrush says he does the same for Republicans.

  Donna Brazile

  Email, Doe, Campaigns

  Source: www.npr.org

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• In the many times I have seen Hillary [Clinton] speak, she never fails to dazzle audiences by speaking in paragraphs, without notes.

  Gail Sheehy

  Dazzle, Speak, Failing

  Source: www.vanityfair.com

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