Pens Quotes - Page 9

• Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Past, Life Is Like

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• Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

  Dorothy Parker

  Grief, Heart, Night

  Dorothy Parker (1936). “Not So Deep as a Well”, Macmillan Company of Canada

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• The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.

  Virginia Woolf

  Block, Fall, Names

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “The Waves”, p.109, Booklassic

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• Have pity on those who are fearful of taking up a pen, or a paintbrush, or an instrument, or a tool because they are afraid that someone has already done so better than they could.

  Paulo Coelho

  Tools, Done, Fear Of Failure

  Paulo Coelho (1992). “The diary of a magus”, Harpercollins

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• When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.

  Anthony Kiedis

  Paper, Sides, Conversation

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• I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Reality, Talking

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• There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Eye, Pockets

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• When I’m a teacher, I won’t be using red pens to grade papers. Red pens will forever be associated with criticism and bad grades in my mind. I don’t want this person to get their short story back with harsh red pen marks all over it. Purple is much friendlier.

  Susane Colasanti

  Teacher, Purple, Forever

  Susane Colasanti (2012). “Keep Holding On”, p.58, Penguin

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• When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

  John Keats

  Book, Night, Thinking

  'When I have fears that I may cease to be' (written 1818)

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• Okay, let me get a pen." There were rustling noises. "I can't find one." More noises. "Okay,shoot." "You found a pen?" "No, but I have a can of Cheez Whiz. I'll write your number on the counter with it, then find a pen and copy it." Jaine recited her number and listened to the spewing noise as Shelley Cheez-Whizzed it on her countertop.

  Linda Howard

  Writing, Numbers, Noise

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• Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, 'I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.' At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not hep but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man.

  Patrick deWitt

  Children, Eye, Men

  Patrick deWitt (2011). “The Sisters Brothers”, p.80, Granta Books

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• I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.

  James Robertson

  Ink, Paper, Flow

  James Robertson (2006). “The testament of Gideon Mack”

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• Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Notebook, Writing, Alive

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.131, Shambhala Publications

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• laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.

  Anthony Burgess

  Law, Orange, Creation

  A Clockwork Orange pt. 1, ch. 2 (1962)

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• I have always been jealous of artists. The smell of the studio, the names of the various tools, the look of a half-finished canvas all shout of creation. What do writers have in comparison? Only the flat paper, the clacketing of the typewriter or the scrape of a pen across a yellow page. And then, when the finished piece is presented, there is a small wonder on one hand, a manuscript smudged with erasures or crossed out lines on the other. The impact of the painting is immediate, the manuscript must unfold slowly through time.

  Jane Yolen

  Jealous, Artist, Impact

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• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Laughing, Interesting

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• In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives -- and time itself -- would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible.

  Julian Barnes

  Waiting, Firsts, Would Be

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• It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

  Daniel Handler

  Jobs, Views, People

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• I concentrated hard and snapped my fingers. "You don't see the sword," I told the girl. "It's just a ballpoint pen." She blinked. "Um . . . no. It's a sword, weirdo.

  Rick Riordan

  Girl, Fingers, Weirdo

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• It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way.

  Miyamoto Musashi

  Warrior, Men, Should Have

  Miyamoto Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Inazo Nitobe (2010). “Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.”, p.9, Bottom of the Hill

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• You gave me Christopher Robin, and then You breathed new life in Pooh. Whatever of each has left my pen Goes homing back to you. My book is ready, and comes to greet The mother it longs to see -- It would be my present to you, my sweet, If it weren't your gift to me.

  A. A. Milne

  Mother, Sweet, Book

  A. A. Milne (2011). “The House at Pooh Corner”, p.3, Egmont UK

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• Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we’re simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don’t know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they’re out there. And—perhaps surprisingly—the only way to find those answers is to study NBA playoff games that happened twenty years ago. For all practical purposes, the voice of Brent Musburger was the pen of Ayn Rand.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Believe, Years, Nba

  Chuck Klosterman (2004). “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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• She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after.

  Janet Fitch

  Notebook, Writing, Night

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

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• Leo took out a pen and autographed the arm of one of the nymphs. “Narcissus is a loser! He’s so weak, he can’t bench-press a Kleenex. He’s so lame, when you look up lame on Wikipedia, it’s got a picture of Narcissus—only the picture’s so ugly, no one ever checks it out.

  Rick Riordan

  Nymphs, Ugly, Arms

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• She was witchy, yes, and in charge of a cauldron roiling with ideas and stories, but she always gave the impression that the stories, the ones she wrote and wrote so very well and so wisely, had simply happened, and that all she had done was to hold the pen. (On Diana Wynne Jones)

  Neil Gaiman

  Ideas, Stories, Done

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