Popular quotes about Letters! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.
Jamaica KincaidFour. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.
Lyndon B. JohnsonI 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 TylerThey [Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler] never entrusted their letters to the mail. There was always a courier, someone to hand deliver their letters.
Gretl BraunI get some letters from girls that if their mothers knew what they were writing me in these letters, they'd get their butts whipped.
Rick JamesIt was the sheer force of the letters themselves which brought forth the meaning, since the only link between the Sephirot of non-verbal Wisdom and verbal Intelligence was through the letters of the alphabet.
Johanna DruckerGenerally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.
Haruki MurakamiFor 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 AlarconI do everything by hand... Even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is.
Margaret KilgallenI read letters and journal entries by [Georgia] O'Keeffe (which were infinitely more useful than any critical analysis of her work).
Liza CampbellThe heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.
Margaret AtwoodMaybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted--wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.
Nicole KraussHow do I stay confident? I just look at my accomplishments that I've made so far. It's a very conceited thing to say, of course, but I just look at everything I've done and all the fans that write letters to me. Sometimes I even look at the good YouTube comments and really pay attentions to them. I've inspired a lot of kids, and it's not every day you get to hear about that when you have this kind of career.
D-PrydeNigel gave the lamp a cautious buff and small smoking red letters appeared in the air. "Hi," Nigel read aloud, "Do not put down the lamp because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity."
Terry PratchettI was sorting through my mother's things. All the letters from friends had to go. I don't know why she kept them, and now they meant nothing to anybody alive. Each generation flushes the toilet for the last.
Lucy EllmannBut it's far too late for us; ring, hair, letters, photographs - all traces of our love will be scattered then, like an anagram.
Daniel HandlerSome time all kinds of letters will be published to the ineffable delight of endless readers.
Alice B. ToklasLove After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek WalcottScared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.
Alan CohenEva [Braun] liked to write cards and letters, she spent a great deal of time on this. She had lovely writing, lovely sets of stationary and she spent hours a day on her correspondence, at least later on.
Gretl BraunA typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1.
Nicholas SparksMy fiancรฉ, you see, belonged to another religion. He was a Parsi. And this was something nobody could stand - all of India was against us. They wrote to Gandhi, to my fther, to me. Insults, death threats. Every day the postman arrived with an enormous sack and dumped the letters on the floor. We even stopped reading them; we let a couple of friends read them and tell us what was in them.
Indira GandhiI received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school.
Ryan WhiteThere are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.
Henry David ThoreauWhen we did 'Dynasty', it was the clothes. I think the clothes affected every woman around the world. I got so many letters, I think we made the designer a millionaire!
Aaron Spelling[John Adams] diary, of course, is even more revealing of his feelings. Both his letters to [his wife] Abigail and his diary tell us what he really thinks about people and events.
Gordon S. WoodThe neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.
Mignon McLaughlinEvery week we ought to have one hour for recieving letters, then go take a bath.
Friedrich NietzschePeople were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.
Charles BukowskiIt's just a combination of letters I liked. And when your whole art's based on the lettering you choose, you kinda figure out what ones work together. I just liked the shapes of the k, a, w, s. It has no meaning.
KAWSI love books, letters and texts visually as objects, and textually, for their content. The same book I write serves a different purpose when included in an exhibition of mine than when read on its own, outside of it.
Jill MagidEvery compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
Sinclair LewisAle, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink.
Guy de Maupassant"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."
Umberto EcoOne of my favorite things is when I get letters and video messages from fans or people who have attended one of my workshops that say things like "because of your workshop, I finally have the confidence to go after my dream/love myself/have the strength not to listen to anyone telling me I can't do the things I really want to do!"
Rachele Brooke SmithReal writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.
Malcolm ForbesThis is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. Thatโs all.
Lois McMaster BujoldSending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It's disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter - I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting.
Steve CarellHow 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 HicksI just so desperately wanted to be published in New Yorker, and I'd so desperately try to get something in it. But I'd always get nice letters back telling me that Mr. Shawn [William Shawn, the New Yorker's editor from 1952 to 1987] just didn't like this or didn't like that about what I submitted.
Kevin SessumsWhen women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*
Elizabeth Cady StantonI didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.
Sylvia Plath