Popular quotes about Letters! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 29
I do that a lot of authors still do not do is allow people to write directly to me. I get about 50 fan letters a day, and I answer every single one of them myself. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it's a pain in the neck and I answer the same questions over and over. But the truth is these people come to my readings clutching these letters saying, "You wrote me back. I can't believe you wrote me back", and I think it really means a lot for them to know that the author values them just as much as they value the author.
Steven Tyler[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.
Erica JongListen and learn: you need fourteen characters, minimum. Use random letters, not words. Hereโs a tip: think of a sentence, and use the first letter in each of those words. Mix it up between upper and lower case. Then pick two numbers that mean something to you โ not dates โ and stick them somewhere between the letters. Put a punctuation mark at the beginning of the password and then a symbol, like a dollar sign, at the end.
Julie JamesThe love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
William HazlittA well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can't buy that because the word doesn't exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.
Paul GoodmanThe Greeks according to official history used letters for hundreds, for tens, and ones.It was extremely complicated. If you talk about Archimedes, you should use Greek letters.
Garry KasparovPostal officials say that before Christmas they receive tons of letters written to Santa Claus, but after Christmas how few letters of thanks are sent to him! From childhood onward, human beings seem to be characterized by thanklessness.
Robert E. LeeThe difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to the success of business today.
Jay BaerIn a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel JohnsonI can take a lot of pats on the back. I love it when I get admiring letters from people. And, of course, I'd love it if the critics would notice me, too.
Norman RockwellFor fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.
Daniel AlarconThe traditional spokespersons for the Evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson and James Dobson, have become alarmed about this drift away from the 'Family Values' issues that they believe should be the overwhelming concerns of Evangelicals. They have expressed their displeasure in letters of protest circulated through the religious media.
Tony CampoloAlgebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.
Mal PeetFrequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words "ANGLO SAXON" on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.
Henry David ThoreauOn all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity--I have letters to make even blindmen see.... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough--I call it mankind's single immortal blemish.... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose--following Christianity's first day!--Why not following its last day, instead?--Following today?--Transvaluation of all values!
Friedrich NietzscheI took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying.
Janet EvanovichI have done quite a few signings at bookstores, libraries and conferences. I have received phone calls and letters from people who liked the book.
Kate DiCamilloM is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises.
Neil GaimanYOU have no room to laugh, that's all. I'm not doing any worse with Boovish than you did with English.' Get off of the car,' J.Lo huffed. 'I am an English superstar.' Uh-uh. There's no comparison. 'Gratuity' in written Boovish has seventeen different bubbles that all have to be the right size and in the right place. 'J.Lo' in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign.
Adam RexHow might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?
Georg C. LichtenbergEarly in my career I began receiving letters from a woman in the Midwest who claimed to be my mother.
Charley PrideWhoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.
Rainer Maria Rilkeclosed my eyes and listened. It was like music I'd heard all my life, even more than "This Lullaby." All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again.
Sarah DessenI also encourage my students to read literary criticism that is deeply personal yet formally inventive and intellectually expansive... books that offer unorthodox ways of doing double duty as literary criticism and as love letters to the power of literature per se.
Rob NixonNever before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?
Martin Luther King, Jr.For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment.
Patrick O'BrianOver the last couple of years I have gotten an average of 2,000 letters a week from fans.
Davy JonesI've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s - the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of pollution. Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and power lines and stuff. People wrote wonderful long letters that took months to receive, and now everything is email.
Garrett HedlundIt was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.
Haruki MurakamiWhatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
Adrienne RichA professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy; he will be silent on his more personal interests, or, if he must speak, will veil them under conventional forms.
Walter RaleighI am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.
Jean-Luc GodardThe wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.
Thomas CarlyleAn average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.
Mark TwainI even got letters form kids in hospitals saying the music is what keeps them going, and that really touched my heart.
Tom Cochraneletters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps - who knows? - we might talk by the way.
Virginia WoolfThe Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far-distant, long-forgotten home.
Thomas CarlyleI have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.
Rachel MaddowProbably the single most commen response I get from my readesr, be it through e-mails or letters, is that they did not know much, or at times, they're quite frank, they didn't care much about Afghanistan. But they pay attention more after reading these novels, and at times it has triggered this humaitarian spirt: some have donated money or at time times, people have joined humatiarian organizations that work in Afghanistan.
Khaled HosseiniHow come people always flip and think they're Jesus? Why not Buddha? Particularly in America, where more people resemble Buddha than Jesus. 'Ah'm BUDDHA!' 'You're Bubba!' 'Ah'm Buddha now..All I gotta do is change 3 letters on ma belt.
Bill HicksSo many things I had thought forgotten Return to my mind with stranger pain: Like letters that arrive addressed to someone Who left the house so many years ago.
Philip Larkin